


A Dark Reflection (In You, In me)

by innerglow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Death, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Bones the Dog (Supernatural), Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Crows, Dark, Destiny, Fate & Destiny, Hallucinating Sam Winchester, Hallucinations, Harm to Animals, Horror, Imaginary Friends, M/M, Murder, Psychological Horror, Sam Winchester's Visions, Serial Killer Sam Winchester, Spooky, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:02:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerglow/pseuds/innerglow
Summary: For as long as there’s been time, there’s been stories of the true Boy King who would one day come to rule all of Hell.This is the story of Sam Winchester’s destiny and how he rose from the darkness inside himself to choose his own way.{A/N:Please heed the warnings.  This is a dark fic through and through, some chapters are a little heavier than others. Also, this carries an Explicit rating for violence and horror elements, not for nsfw reasons.  The pairing is Sam/Dean but it hovers a little above show level in this first part of this particular verse.}





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tofu_is_amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tofu_is_amazing/gifts).

> Written as part of [2019's SPN Eldritch's Bang](http://spneldritchbang.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Thank you to the MODS for running a flawless challenge that was massively fun to partake in! I can't wait to go read all of the spookalicious works that were posted this month! 
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful artist [Phoenix1966](http://phoenix1966.livejournal.com) of LJ. Please check out the [Art Master Post](https://phoenix1966.livejournal.com/35037.html). Here's her [tumblr post](https://phoenix1966sbottom.tumblr.com/post/188688911029/a-dark-reflection-in-you-in-me-author-name) as well. - Nic, you so brilliantly brought my images to life in a way that depicts the true horror and darkness of this fic. Thank you for being so wonderful to work with; it's truly an honor to have your artwork decorating this piece! 
> 
> Also, a _massive_ thank you to the legendary [Firesign10](http://archiveofourown.org/users/firesign10) for offering to beta this beast. I can 100% say that this fic would not be in the shape it is without you. I appreciate you and your time, so so so much! 
> 
> \--
> 
> This fic idea was birthed into the world back in 2015 after a long conversation with my friend - [tofu_is_amazing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tofu_is_amazing). I wrote a quarter of the first chapter and then (tragically) let it sit in my google docs for 4 years collecting dust. I am so grateful for this Eldritch Bang for giving me the necessary gusto and inspiration to write out these words and give this story the proper length that it was always deserving of. And to be completely honest, this fic does have a part 2 also deserves to be written. So, if you read this and you want more, please let me know--because if there's enough interest here, I will definitely proceed with the second part. 
> 
> Thank you for being here and for taking this journey with me and Sam. I hope you enjoy your stay and survive long enough to tell me all the juicy bits you loved (or hated) about it. <3

  
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_"In some stories, the protagonist has_  
_to kill the bad thing to release its light._  
_In my story, I am the protagonist & the bad thing._  
_I have to learn how to bend the light out of myself."_  
\- **Sabrina Benaim / On Releasing Light**

_ **Wake up. ** _

A whisper of hot breath, the thinnest lick of the tongue against his ear.

_ **Wake up. ** _

Long fingers roping themselves around his neck, squeezing—asphyxiating the sleep from his lungs.

_ **Look. At. Me.** _

Thumbnails press into his pulse point and dig crescent-mooned shapes there. They itch at first, before the burn of pain sets in and then it’s followed by the sting of skin breaking, of flesh giving way to crimson pearls of blood.

“Sam! Sammy, what the fuck are you doing???” A voice comes, and it sounds like home.

_ **WAKE UP!** _

A violent tremor makes its way through his body and it shocks him awake, his eyes opening to concerned green eyes looking down at him.

“Dean?” Sam tries, his voice raspy with sleep. As his throat moves to speak, he feels the pressure of something against it.

“Jesus….” Dean hisses, his calloused hands coming to rest against whatever’s against Sam’s throat.

But as sleep drains from Sam’s eyes, he realizes that Dean’s hands are trying to pry Sam’s own hands from around his neck. And with that sudden realization, he releases his own hands and lets Dean pull them free.

“Tryna claw your own fuckin’ neck off?” Dean whispers, equal measures pissed off and concerned. “Dunno what the fuck you were dreaming about, but I could barely snap you outta it.”

Sam looks up at his Brother and then over his shoulder to what stands behind him, to the blackest eyes he’s ever known staring down at him.

“I dunno…” Sam whispers, tears swimming behind his eyes. But even as he says the words, he knows it’s just another lie in the millions he’s littered over the course of his life. Knows all too well what is wrong, but it’s something Dean can never know. “I’m fine.”

Sam pushes up from his bed and shakes Dean’s fingers from his hands, pushing his Brother back and away from him.

“Sure you are.” Dean’s tone is riddled with sarcasm.

Sam can’t blame him; it’s not the first time something like this has occurred. But every time it does, Dean’s focus on the issue intensifies and it makes Sam’s skin crawl with anxiety.

_**Can’t tell him.**_, The owner of the black eyes whispers to him. _**You know what happens if you do. Need I remind you?**_ A thumb carves its way across Dean’s throat and the boy with black eyes makes a hanging head motion. Dean’s head drops forward like his neck has been snapped, and it has Sam lurching from the bed and blinking back the tears that fight to surface. Blink once, Dean’s dead. Blink twice, Dean’s alive and still looking at him with a million questions written across his face.

_It’s not real,_ Sam thinks to himself and rubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands. _Thank god._

“Breakfast?” Sam manages to speak.

Dean motions toward the hotel table that is situated right in front of the window and Sam finds a box of donuts and two coffees.

“Maybe you should—uh,” Dean motions to Sam’s throat. “Get cleaned up first?”

“Er, right…” Sam mutters, looking down at his hands, his nails still dark with blood. “I’ll take a shower, but you better leave me a raspberry-filled donut… or else!”

“Yea, yeah, Princess. Who says I even got you one in the first place, huh?”

“Shuddup.”

“Make me.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Sam finds himself in front of the bathroom mirror, the owner of the black eyes standing behind him, meeting the reflection of his eyes.

_**I’m sorry.** _The black-eyed boy whispers, his fingers curling around the red of Sam’s throat, _ **I just wanted you to wake up. I didn’t mean to hurt you. **_His touch is gentle around the red crescent moons lining both sides of Sam’s neck. And then he bores his line of vision back into Sam’s and he whispers darkly,_** I was lonely. **_

Sam looks away from the black-eyed boy and tries to shrug off the shadow of him while stepping into the shower; he knows that the clear shower curtain is the only thing that separates the two of them in this moment. Knows that the boy will be there when he’s done, that he’ll follow Sam around like some sickly ghost that fills his head with bad thoughts.

The hotel shampoo smells too much like hospital soap, and it makes Sam’s nose scrunch up as he works it through his hair, already hating the way it’ll make him smell like sterile antiseptic. When the soap runs down his neck, the broken skin there hisses slightly and it makes his stomach clench with the violence of Black-Eyes’ actions. Of how he used his own hands to strangle himself awake.

_ **I said I was sorry. ** _

Shut up.

Sam knows he shouldn’t speak so harshly to Black-Eyes, knows what happens when he does, but there’s a flare of anger boiling behind his ribs and he just wants to be left alone. Just needs to exist in the quiet of his own thoughts, to look in the mirror and only see himself, to not have to worry if he makes the wrong move or says the wrong thing. He doesn’t want Dean to pay the ultimate price. And he knows Black-Eyes is serious, knows because of the other things he’s made Sam do when he misbehaves.

Disturbing images roll through Sam’s mind, visions of blood, dark alleyways and echoing footsteps. He smells the fear like some might smell fresh rain on cement, knows that the stronger it is, the better Black-Eyes likes it. And the better Black-Eyes likes it, the more Sam hates it. The pit of his stomach falls out as he works diligently, trying desperately to make haste so he doesn’t have to face the horrors of his actions.

Of Black-Eyes’ wrongdoing.

Sam slams those thoughts out of his brain as he twists the water faucet off in the shower. He lets his hand rest there as he leans his head against the cool tile and tries to breathe evenly. When he lets go of the faucet, he exhales a huge sigh and works to convince himself that he has enough willpower to get through the rest of the day. Knows that he has to, so that Black-Eyes will keep his hands to himself.

To protect Dean. Always for Dean.

When Sam returns to the donut box, there’s only one white powdered donut waiting for him. “Where’s the raspberry-filled one?” He tries to hide his irritation as he questions his Brother.

“What do you mean?” Dean looks up from his phone and raises his eyebrows at him. “It’s in the box.”

“No, it isn’t.” Sam says, and this time he lets the anger out in his voice. .

“Hmm,” Dean hums seriously as he looks at Sam straight in the eyes. “I wonder where it could’ve gone?” The corner of his mouth twitches with the beginnings of a smile.

“Are you serious?” Sam growls, closing the lid of the box roughly and pushing it away. “I don’t ask for much and you still find ways to be an asshole.”

“Brother’s rights,” Dean chides, with an obnoxious grin etching itself across his lips.

Sam wants to tell Dean to go fuck himself, but he bites his tongue and thinks better of it. He knows it’s just a donut, and that Dean does this kind of bullshit all the time, it’s what makes him—_him_. But Sam’s fighting with Black-Eyes leaves him already at the boiling point of rage and if he isn’t careful, the loss of a little raspberry-filled peace of heaven might send him over the edge. The same one he’s been balancing on more and more as of late.

He’s shoving his feet into his tennis shoes, the laces still tightly knotted, when Dean speaks again behind him.

“So, you’re not gonna eat?”

Sam stills and wills himself to breathe out calmly. “No.”

Dean chuckles behind him, the springs in his mattress squeaking as he gets up and moves to the box still sitting on the table. “I guess I’ll eat this one too then.” And he looks over his shoulder one last time to double check if Sam might’ve changed his mind.

But Sam just stares blankly at him and then reaches for his hoodie, pulling it on in one smooth motion. He just wants to be out of the hotel room, just needs some air to breathe—some space to think. His fingers are working at the deadbolt and the door chain, a wave of panic crawling up into his throat. He just needs to get out, just needs to not see Dean for five seconds, just needs time to let the fire in his chest soothe back down to a manageable size.

“Where’r you going?” Dean’s voice has lost its playfulness and is now markedly more serious.

Sam stills with his hand on the doorknob, his fingers white-knuckling themselves as he squeezes. “To get some air.” His teeth are clamped tight as he speaks.

“Aw, Samantha--” Dean starts, but Sam feels his shoulders roll up with the desire to punch something.

_**Do it.**_ Black-Eyes’ voice says to him. His voice reverberating against the sides of his skull with a sharp lick. _**He deserves it. **_

“NO!” Sam shouts out, his fingers twisting themselves around the knob to open the door.

He bolts outside and swings the door shut behind him with a loud bang, a part of him feeling the rattle of it vibrate up the old walls of the building. Knows that Dean is sitting on the other side of that door with a puzzled expression on his face, wanting to know what is going on with him, while also wanting to pretend everything is normal. It’s what they’re good at—pretending.

But Sam knows that he can’t do that anymore; things are getting worse with every state line they cross and he’s losing control. Like Black-Eyes is standing on the tips of Sam’s fingers as he holds onto the ledge of sanity, slowly grinding their bones until they break. Until he’s not even sure what separates them to begin with.

Sam starts to walk out into the parking lot and aims for the treeline to the left of the motel. He doesn’t want Dean to find him, he just wants to be left alone, just wants to disappear and not exist for a few minutes. Few places offer him the sort of relief he needs, but somehow getting lost within the thickness of trees always does the trick. There’s something about losing your direction, of your grasp on the world as it truly is and just existing in the quiet, comforting company of Mother Nature.

Twigs and leaves crack and crunch under the weight of Sam’s footfalls, the echoes expanding and retracting around him. He tries to ignore the rustling behind him, tries to imagine that it’s because of anything but the black-eyed boy who follows behind him wordlessly. Knows that if he were to look over his shoulder, the boy would smile back at him—because this is what he wants. Knows that Black-Eyes wants to separate Sam from the rest, wants to wait until he’s weak and pick him off like a wounded animal.

_ **That’s not true. ** _

Sam stills and clenches his fists at his sides. _The fuck it isn’t._

_**I can’t kill you, Sam. If I did, what would be the point in all of this? **_The black-eyed boy materializes in front of Sam, his face pinched with a hint of humor. He walks to his right and circles around the trunk of a tree, his fingers spread out and bumping over the bark as he moves. He stills behind the tree, out of Sam’s view and then moves to peek around the tree. _**I know you think I’ll go away, but I’m here even when you can’t see me. There’s no separating us, Sam**_. And then he moves forward, coming back into view and then leaning against the tree to stare back at Sam with malice. _**What have I always told you? **_

Sam’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth as he looks into tar pools of black. He doesn’t want to say what Black-Eyes wants him to, doesn’t want for it to be real—even if there are parts of him that are starting to believe that it might be.

Black-Eyes flashes forward, moving instantly from the tree to standing nose to nose with Sam, his eyes pulling downward with a squint. _**Sam? **_He hisses like a snake, his lips pulling tight with annoyance. _**You have to say it; don’t make me make you. **_There’s poison in his voice as he gives a sickly smile..

Sam looks away, swallows down the ball of regret that’s lodged in his throat. Knows well that Black-Eyes can do whatever he wants with him, knows that simply being defiant is not the path to take.

There’s a camera roll of memory footage that slips behind his eyes, clicking from one image to the next like one of those old, red 3D ViewMasters. His stomach curls around the edges, wilts in his gut as he sees the contorted faces of those he couldn’t save. The ones that died begging for their lives, some of them still breathing when Black-Eyes forced Sam to cut them open and dissect their insides. Of how the body count is higher than his two hands, of how he’s had to start counting on his toes.

He remembers when it was just roadkill science projects, remembers the first bird he ever snapped the wings off of and how Black-Eyes likened the snap to that of Sam’s yellow No. 2 pencils. Of how he asked if Sam felt better afterwards, with bird guts and feathers littering the ground. And how he puked up everything he ate that day on top of his bird crime scene, Black-Eyes standing across from him as he barked out a laugh that sounded familiar to his own, but also not the same in a very disturbing way.

Sam pushes those thoughts away, he reaches up and rubs at his eyes, as though he’s somehow physically trying to wipe his mind of those memories. Of the things he’s done in lazy afternoons when Dean and his dad left him to his own devices, or the nights he couldn’t sleep and snuck out into the blackest of nights to become one of the monsters that his very family spends their life tracking down and killing.

And then he thinks only of Dean, thinks of the face he’d make at Sam if he knew what his own Brother was up to—of the cruel things he’s done. Wonders if it’d make any difference if Sam told him he’d done everything to protect him, to save him. Wonders if Dean would think him a villain or a hero, or if Sam might find himself staring down the barrel of his Brother’s favorite gun. Part of him wants to convince the rest of him that Dean would see him as a hero, but he knows the shade those green eyes would change to—knows that Dean would hate him no matter what.

_**SAM. **_Black-Eyes growls, bringing Sam back to the present, a hot breath falling across his cheek. _**What have I always told you?**_

There’s heat behind Sam’s eyes as the feeling of claustrophobia sinks its teeth into him, like he’s trapped between a glass wall and the torment of Black-Eyes. As though there’s no escape, no hope for his soul to be saved. He curses whoever he was in his past life, because the karma punch that he’s been handed in this one is cruel and unwanted. He sags into himself, his shoulders dropping and rolling forward, falling with his chin as he looks down at his shoes in defeat.

_**You have to look at me when you say it. **_Black-Eyes instructs, as though there’s no room for bargaining.

Sam looks up and into the darkest black he’s ever known, swears if he’s not careful he’d fall right into them and never be found again. He focuses every hateful thought and feeling he has into the back of Black-Eyes’ skull and somehow he gets his mouth to say the very thing that always makes him sick to his stomach.

“I am you…” Sam says to Black-Eyes, even though he’s perfectly aware that to anyone else it would look like he’s talking to himself. “… and you are me.”

Black-Eyes sneers widely at Sam’s words, licks his lips and echoes Sam’s words. _**I am you, and you are me.**_ Black-Eyes puts his hand on Sam’s cheek and strokes the skin there gently. _**We are the same.**_

Sam swallows, blinks back the rising tide of tears in his chest and repeats, “We _are_ the same.”

After Sam gives Black-Eyes what he wanted, he promises to give Sam some peace—even if it’s only temporary.

The forest stretches endlessly in front of Sam, his inner compass telling him he’s about half a mile in and though he shouldn’t go any further, he finds himself going deeper into the woods anyway. There’s something magical about how the lungs of earth can be so full of life and yet, eerily quiet at the same time. It’s as though it’s only Sam and his feet against the ground that echoes any sound, as though it’s his footfalls that have become the very heartbeat inside the ribs of Mother Nature’s chest.

He finds himself sitting against the trunk of one of the trees, lets his body rest against it, feels as the whole of him sighs while the bark digs into his spine. There’s nothing but him and the silence of the trees, the quiet of his mind and the steady pump of his heart. The backs of his eyes start to feel heavy with the lack of sleep he’s been getting lately, his dreams growing darker and more immersive by the day. Of how it’s slowly started to move from just dreams, to him actually causing harm. First to himself, but what comes next? What if Dean isn’t able to wake him up? What if Black-Eyes gets his way with him? What if it gets to a point where he can’t be stopped, what if those nightmares he’s been running from actually turn out to be true?

He swallows those thoughts down, tries to push them from his mind, tries to convince himself that he’s going to be okay. He breathes in deep, holds the pocket of air and then breathes it out evenly. Maybe if he just keeps his head down and just does what he needs to with little to no complaints, maybe things will go more smoothly. He takes another deep breath, bigger this time and feels his lungs creak around the effort. One, two, three, four—finds himself counting all the way up to—ten. And then he’s pushing out the air in one long exit through his mouth.

When he’s cycled through about ten inhales and exhales, his mind finally softens enough to let him truly relax. There’s nothing but cotton-soft meadows rolling through his mind, nothing but whisper-light silence—the noise finally draining out and offering him a little of what the forest around him gets to appreciate always.

Quiet.

There’s a zip cord inside of him that gets pulled towards the ground, he feels as though he’s melting into the bark behind him and puddling around the roots and leaves he sits upon. His chest and shoulders drop and his head leans back against the wood. Deep in the back of his mind he knows he shouldn’t fall asleep there, knows that it’s probably a bad idea and that he should resist what his body wants. But the amount of restless nights that are stacked upon his eyelids are heavier and more demanding. He just needs some sleep, just needs a few peaceful dreams to get him through the next few days.

But since when has ever known what that is? Peaceful things do not exist for him, they never did. That notion went up in flames with everything else back in Kansas.

Black-Eyes is holding his hand and leading him into the woods. Sam looks down at his hand to where it’s enveloped by identical fingers that don’t belong to him, but to the black-eyed version of himself. His eyes flick up to the back of Black-Eyes’ head, watches as the moonlight hanging overhead catches the red sun-soaked highlights that he knows match his own. They look the exact same, from head to toe—except for one glaring difference.

As Sam thinks of those black sinkholes, Black-Eyes turns to look over his shoulder at him. His eyes dig into Sam’s and there’s something that pools in the pit of his stomach—it feels a lot like dread. The back of his neck comes to life, an eerie sensation crawling across his ribs and then Black-Eyes smiles at him and it’s horrifying.

_**Come. **_Black-Eyes says to him and his voice sounds darker than Sam’s somehow. As though it’s tinged with the black soot of Hell.

Sam doesn’t know where he’s going or why he’s helplessly following Black-Eyes through the forest in the middle of the night. Fog clings to the air and every time Sam breathes out, his breath clouds around him. It’s cold outside, but in contrast—he’s burning hot, his hairline soaked in sweat.

“Where are we going?” He says, trying to dig his heels into the dirt, a growing panic crawling up the backs of his legs.

Black-Eyes laughs darkly, yanks at Sam’s arm and gets his feet moving once again. _**You’ll see.**_

It’s that precise moment that Sam knows that he doesn’t want to see whatever it is that the boy with black eyes has in store for him. Because nothing Black-Eyes ever shows him is something he wants to see. It’s usually things that keep Sam awake for days, things he doesn’t know if he’ll ever learn to forget. Things that are violent and evil. Things that make his stomach churn and his insides pool around his ankles with just how desperately sick they make him.

“Please,” Sam pulls at Black-Eyes’ hand once again, his feet trying to find purchase on the ground. “I don’t want to go.”

Black-Eyes doesn’t stop, pulls Sam’s arm harder and looks over his shoulder to glare those ugly tar pools at him. _**You know resisting doesn’t work out so well for you, Sam. I don’t know why we have to go through this every time.**_

“I don’t--” Sam starts, his heart hammering under his ribs. “I don’t want to see.”

_**You will. **_Black-Eyes sneers at him. _**You will see and you will learn to like it.**_

“No! Please! _Please…_” Sam uses his other arm to try to untangle Black-Eyes’ fingers from his own.

He digs his nails into the sides of Black-Eyes’ fingers, tries to wiggle loose the death grip around his hand. But it feels like the more he tries, the more he fights and pounds his fist into the back of Black-Eyes’ hand, the tighter those fingers wind around Sam’s—like a vice grip. They clench around him and pull him violently, not even stopping when Sam loses his footing in the dirt and hits his knees. Black-Eyes doesn’t even look back at him when he falls, he just keeps moving, dragging Sam behind him like a rag doll.

Sam’s jeans tear open over a sharp rock on the forest floor and it nicks his knee wide open. He yelps out as he feels his skin tear. The wound feels big enough for stitches, and when he cries out, he’s only met with a yank of his arm and a growl out of Black-Eyes’ mouth. Sam tries to find his footing, and get back on his feet, but every time he gets close he falls back down.

Black-Eyes drags Sam like this for a long time, until he stops fighting and comes to limp behind him with a busted-up knee and a bloody elbow. It almost feels like they’re walking in circles, Sam’s eyes tracing across the trunks of trees and feeling like he’s seen the same ones more than a few times. But in the darkness of night and the fog that blankets around them, it’s hard to really know what he’s truly seeing. Maybe his mind is playing tricks on him; it’s hard to trust it, when he’s being held hostage by an invisible version of himself.

_**Are you ready? **_ Black-Eyes’ feet come to a stop at the edge of a clearing, where there’s rustling and other noises that Sam can’t quite decipher.

“No, please!” Sam still tries to plead with the black-eyed version of himself. “I just want this to stop.”

Black-Eyes looks back at him, turns his body to face him fully and reaches up with both of his hands, placing them on the sides of Sam’s face. He looks at Sam with reverence, with care and something that is close to love, the way someone might look at a sibling. If it wasn’t the smile that slowly carves across his lips, Sam might actually think he was regretful.

_**C’mon, Sammy. **_ Black-Eyes coaxes, Dean’s nickname for Sam falling from his lips like hot coals that burn against Sam’s ribs angrily. Like matchsticks striking against the flint.

“Don’t call me that,” Sam’s fists ball up at his sides as he hisses at Black-Eyes. “No one gets to call me that but Dean.”

_**Ah, Dean. **_ Black-Eyes says, his eyes rolling back, the glimmer of the moonlight reflecting back at him. _**Funny you mention him. **_

“What does--” Sam begins to question as Black-Eyes moves and exposes the view his body was once hiding.

Dean lies on the ground in the middle of the clearing, his body still, but there’s movement around him that Sam has to squint harder to see. When he strains to look, he sees black shadows twirl wildly through the air around Dean, as though they’re celebrating something. But Sam can’t quite decide what that is, his heart lurching against his ribs with the sight of Dean before him. Sam moves to step towards Dean, but Black-Eyes holds him back by lacing his arm around the front of Sam’s chest as he stands behind him.

_**Watch.**_ Black-Eyes whispers against Sam’s ear.

Sam tries to close his eyes, but it’s as if there’s some kind of invisible hold keeping them wide open. The strain of trying to close them and not being able to, causes the burn of tears to line his lash line. He’s helpless but to do exactly as Black-Eyes wants, to do nothing but _watch_.

From the blackness beside Dean, there’s movement as a body unfolds itself from the ground and stacks itself upright. It moves slowly, stretching as it looks at itself in the darkness, as though marveling at the concept of being a body to begin with. As though it’s body is new, as though it’s admiring the strength and pull of it.

And then it notices Dean, its body bending exaggeratedly over the heap of skin and bone that was Sam’s Brother. It reaches out and touches Dean’s face, it’s emotion evident even in the shadows of night. It feels like a goodbye of sorts, as though it’s touching Dean’s face with the most sincere form of sorrow. The kind of sorrow that can only come from regret, for having lost something of value—of which was loved.

The clouds overhead part slightly, the clearing brightening around the sea of fog and shadows. Sam’s eyes adjust to the image of Dean’s bloodied face, of the way his eyes are wide open with fear. As if the last thing he saw before his heart gave out terrified the life right out of him. Sam’s throat slams shut with the image, his lungs coughing with the lack of oxygen. Everything inside of him wants to scream out for his Brother, wants to go to him, wants to plead with whatever it is that stands over him—to bring him back.

_**Look. **_ Black-Eyes whispers against Sam’s ear, his arm around him winding tighter against Sam’s movements to get free. _**You need to see. **_

Sam’s voice chokes out a sob, his eyes held just as wide as Dean’s. “_DEAN!!!”_ He yells into the blackest of nights before him, the image of Dean’s lifeless body and haunted expression tearing into the pit of Sam’s stomach.

The shadowed body looks up at Sam’s voice and stares right into the back of Sam’s skull. Sam knows that face, would know it unquestionably if he saw it anywhere.

“Hello, Sam.” It says, its voice dark and somehow oddly familiar.

Sam’s heart beats fast, it feels as if it’s going to give out. He can’t breathe, he can’t think, all he can do is look and see.

Before him is a future him, older and rough around the edges; his build is taller and bulkier, his hair longer and yet, somehow the same. And despite these differences, it’s still unmistakably and undeniably _him_.

As Sam comes to this realization, the future him that is looking him straight into the eyes, smiles. His eyes flash to yellow, glowing like burning embers into the night sky.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”


	2. Chapter Two

“Sam!” A voice calls, followed by the pounding of feet and the rustling of leaves. “Sammy?” There’s concern, and it’s edged with panic. 

There are hands on his body, in his clothes, yanking him up. And Sam wants to respond, wants to wake up, but he’s being kept under by the image of yellow eyes and the picture of Dean lying lifeless on the ground. There’s a sharp lightning bolt that rips up his spine every time he hears the sentence, ‘_I’ve been waiting for you._’ 

“Shit.” The voice curses when Sam doesn’t come to. “Shit, shit, shit!” It says, this time more violently as Sam’s back comes colliding against the ground. “What’d you do, Sammy?” 

Dean. 

Sam struggles against the black curtain in his mind, everything inside of him needing to see and feel for his Brother, to know that he’s real and alive. To know that what he saw was nothing more than a cruel nightmare. Yet, the more he strains against the darkness he’s being held in, the harder the curtains are to move. He yells for his Brother, yells until his throat is raw and hoarse, but the body of him never makes a sound. 

“Sammy,” Dean’s hand is warm and reassuring against Sam’s cheek. “If you can hear me in there, you gotta wake up. C’mon…” 

Dean’s hands move from his face down to his chest and over and around to his back, looking for some kind of wound—seeking a reason for why Sam is unresponsive. But as he searches, he keeps muttering curses under his breath, his hands getting more frantic when they come up empty again and again. 

“Sam—Sammy!!” Dean shouts and it’s so loud that Sam can feel it echo inside of his own ribs. He feels the body of him shake, of how Dean’s trying to jar him loose from whatever sleep that he’s in. “C’mon!!” 

Sam feels himself start to fight harder against the black curtains of his mind, feels himself running in circles looking for a break in the fabric, for a way out. There’s a dark chuckle in the back of his mind and it makes the back of his neck come alive with fear. _Let me go! _He screams it repeatedly against the black curtain, tries to yell it loud enough that Black-Eyes and the yellow-eyed version of himself might hear him. _LET ME GO! _He’s shouting so loud that he feels his throat start to open up. Hears as the body of him whispers a hoarse sounding, “Please…” 

Dean’s hands still at Sam’s voice. Sam feels the heat of his Brother getting close to his face, knows that Dean is probably angling his ear closer to make sure he’s actually heard Sam speak and that he’s not imagining things. Sam who knows he has to muster up enough strength to get his voice to move once more. 

He backs away from the black curtains and screams as fiercely as he can manage, “_PLEASE!_” And he’s surprised when his voice works out a gurgling ‘please’ in response. 

“Ah, Jesus Christ!” Dean hisses, his heat leaving as he moves to pick Sam up and fling him over his shoulder. “I don’t know what is going on with you, Sammy, but it’s starting to freak me out.” 

Sam feels how his stomach bounces against Dean’s shoulder, how it reminds him that he still hasn’t eaten at all, and how he has Black-Eyes growling in the darkness. 

They’re both hungry. 

He loses himself to the sound of Black-Eyes’ demonic sounding voice. Loses himself to the blackness of his mind and the curtains all around him covering him in nothingness. 

When he comes to, Sam’s brain aches, as though it’s been awake the entire time he’s been under. He blinks his eyes open and feels the assault of the lamplight flood into his vision slowly, his mind trying to grasp the fact that he’s no longer in the woods and that he’s lying back in the hotel room, with only the slightest memory of the black curtains and how he couldn’t wake up. 

“Dean?” He tries, but his voice sounds far away and wrecked, as though he’s sick. 

“Oh thank fucking god,” Dean comes into Sam’s line of vision, hovering above him with worry written across his expression. “You fucking scared the crap out of me!” He’s got a glass of water in his hand and Sam moves to sit up. 

“S-sorry,” Sam says without really knowing what he has to be sorry for. Maybe he’s sorry for getting overly upset about the fact that Dean had eaten his donut and for disappearing into the woods.

“You gotta tell me what is going on, Sammy,” Dean hands the glass of water to him and sits on the edge of the bed to face him. 

Sam looks from the glass of water up into Dean’s concerned eyes. He wants so badly to tell him the truth, to tell him what he’s been going through for the last two years. How Black-Eyes appeared shortly after his fifteenth birthday and how he’s only getting stronger and stronger by the day. That Sam has started to suspect that he’s moved from simply instructing Sam on what to do, to actually taking control of Sam’s body. He doesn’t have solid proof of it, but Sam thinks about the room with black curtains in his mind and how he knows that it wasn’t the first time he’d been there. 

He moves to take a sip of water, his throat aching with the lack of use. The cool taste moves through him, sloshes down his esophagus and trickles into his empty stomach. He winces with the feel of it hitting nothing, knows that he needs to eat. 

“I’m hungry,” Sam manages, handing the glass of water back to Dean, but he motions for Sam to keep it.

“Y-yeah, ugh, sorry about earlier.” Dean says, and he sounds truly apologetic, as though if he had known it would end up with finding Sam passed out in the woods, he wouldn’t have even tread down that road in the first place. 

Sam offers a small smile, his cheeks feeling heavier than normal. “It’s okay.” 

“No it’s not,” Dean snipes. “_Nothing_ is okay right now. I don’t know what is going on with you, but it’s really starting to freak me out and I’m gonna have to tell Dad or Bobby. If I hadn’t found you in the woods, who knows what would’ve happened to you, Sam.” 

Sam avoids his Brother’s eyes, looking down at his fingers and the way they’re circling the glass in his hands. He thinks about Black-Eyes and knows that he’s caught in an impossible corner where he desperately wants to tell Dean, but fears what the consequences might be. So he does what he’s gotten into the habit of doing and he dances around the truth. 

“Where’d you find me?” Sam asks, trying to act like he doesn’t remember the clearing in the woods, or the way that those yellow eyes glowed crookedly in his direction. 

“Well, thankfully, I was able to track you via your location on your cell phone. I just had this feeling like something was off when you wouldn’t answer your phone. I called maybe three times, and it went to voicemail every time.” Dean looks down at Sam’s hands around the glass, both of them needing something to focus on. “You were deep in the woods, maybe two miles or so, but then I found you at the edge of a clearing with a busted up knee and elbow. I tried to wake you, but I couldn’t do it. You just kept saying _‘please’_ over and over again, all the way back here.” 

“I don’t remember how I got from the tree to the clearing, or how I hurt my knee,” Sam says, pointing to his exposed knee that’s now patched up. “Or my elbow…” He gestures to it and knows it’s patched up as well without looking. “Last thing I remember was falling asleep against a tree; I didn’t sleep well last night—as you know.” Sam adds the last three words, finally making eye contact with his Brother, both of them remembering the events from the morning when Sam tried strangling himself awake. 

“We’ll figure it out, Sammy.” Dean pats Sam’s chest and offers a small smile, trying to seem convincing, even though Sam can still see the worry filling his eyes. “We always do.” 

“Okay,” Sam shrugs and hands the glass of water back to Dean. “But seriously, if I don’t eat soon I’m gonna gnaw off my own arm.” He says it with a smirk and means it as a joke, forgetting how it might be ill-timed due to the current circumstances. He smiles wider to push through the small bubble of tension between the both of them, smiles instead of letting it fall from his lips completely---trying desperately to appear normal. 

“Alright, let me order us some pizza. Just veggies, right?” Dean says as he gets up from the bed and looks over his shoulder. 

“Right,” Sam nods and watches as Dean moves to the table where the empty box of donuts still sits and feels himself slide back down into his bed. 

Black-Eyes has been silent since he woke up and a slinking feeling crawls down Sam’s ribs and tells him that his silence is something to worry about. He remembers the clearing, remembers how tightly Black-Eyes held him in place, and he can’t help feeling like his arm is still being crushed against his ribs. He feels like he can’t breathe deeply enough without feeling his chest stretch against Black-Eyes’ grip. 

Something in Sam knows that the next time he sees those dripping black eyes, that he’ll come to regret it. 

Two days go by with little to no issues since Dean found him in the woods. Sam would feel more relief if there wasn’t a slow crawling dread that licked against his stomach, warning him to not get comfortable. Dean is still on edge, as though he can feel the same knick of foreboding, as though he knows it’s just a matter of time before something goes really wrong. He sent a few voicemails to their dad, who hasn’t bothered to return them. Dean curses every time he tries, but only to be met with that same monotone message again. 

“If Dad doesn’t call us by tomorrow, we’re calling Bobby,” Dean says mostly for himself, but also for Sam. 

“I feel fine, Dean,” Sam lies. “Really.” 

“Yeah, right now you feel fine,” Dean reasons. “But give it a few days and I bet you’ll be clawing your neck off or passing out and not remembering it again. You’re not fine, Sam.”

_**You’re a freak, Sam. **_There’s a fingertip that traces its way across the back of his neck and down his arm. Fingers that look like his own wind around his wrist and squeeze tightly. _**Did you miss me? **_

Sam jerks his arm away, forgets that Dean’s looking and tries to tear his eyes away from the invisible space beside him that Black-Eyes materializes in. Tries to maintain even breaths, tries to look back into Dean’s eyes and be just as convincing as he was ten seconds before. 

Dean looks back at him, looks at his arm with a calculation that he doesn’t vocalize. “You’re not fine, Sam. End of story.” 

_**Freak. **_Black-Eyes whispers, looks over his shoulder as he walks towards Dean. He draws his fingers up Dean’s arm and across the back of his neck. _**You can’t ignore me, Sam. **_ His other hand comes up behind Dean’s neck and he wraps both of them around Dean’s throat. _**I said, **_Black-Eyes squeezes his fingers against Dean’s throat**. _Did you miss me?_**

Dean makes a choking noise, his hands flying up to his neck and slipping right through Black-Eyes fingers to the flesh of his neck. He claws his fingers against nothing, his eyes widening with fear and then bulging out of his head slightly as Black-Eyes smiles and squeezes impossibly tighter. The look written across his face dares him to speak, to prove just how not fine he really is. 

Sam squeezes his eyes shut, blinks a few times and looks back at Dean. His face is still purpling over, his lungs heaving with the lack of oxygen and Sam sits as still as he can, trying to be as unflinching as possible despite the image of Dean before him suffocating on his own breath.

_**Sammy… what’s it gonna take? **_ Black-Eyes stares over Dean’s shoulders and narrows his eyes in Sam’s direction. _**What do I have to do? Where’s your weak spot? **_ He lets go of Dean’s neck and suddenly Dean’s fine and staring back at Sam just as normal as he was before. But the moment is fleeting and then Black-Eyes is tracing his tongue against Dean’s neck. _**Is this it? **_Black-Eyes cards his fingers down the front of Dean’s shirt, walking around to the front of him and dipping down to kiss him open-mouthed and sloppy. 

Sam makes a wrecked noise, his body jolting forward before he stops himself.

“Sam, what is it?” He hears Dean say, but the fake-Dean in front of him cranes his neck back and welcomes Black-Eyes’ tongue into his mouth. 

_Yes, okay? Yes! _Sam shouts in his mind, his fingers digging into the soft pads of his hand. 

Black-Eyes tears his lips away from Dean and moves to straddle his lap. He grinds down erotically and moans. His fingers move up into Dean’s hair and pull his neck back, exposing the long expanse of it, all that aching skin begging to be owned. Sam watches as Black-Eyes sucks against Dean’s pulse, how Dean’s hands find themselves tangled up in Black-Eyes’ hair and how he grunts something feral when Black-Eyes grinds down against him for the third time. 

Sam feels himself clawing forward, reaching for the edge of his bed to where Dean sits on his. It’s an automatic response, his throat clenching down with the site of his ugliest desires being acted out in front of him. 

“S-stop!” Sam yells. “Get the fuck off of him!” And then he’s reaching forward and wrapping his fist around Black-Eyes’ neck. 

The minute his fingers curl against Black-Eyes’ throat, he watches as the image of Black-Eyes evaporates before him, leaving him standing in front of Dean with his fingers wrapped tightly around Dean’s neck. Dean’s eyes are wide and he’s got his hands up and pressed tightly against Sam’s chest. Sam feels his stomach fall out of his body and scurry under his bed like some crooked animal.

“Dean,” Sam searches for words as he lets go of Dean’s throat and Dean side steps him to stand and back away from him. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, you’re_ just fine _alright.” Dean traces the echo that Sam’s fingers left around his neck. “What the fuck was that?” 

Sam stares down at his hands, turns them over and tries to push down the growing wave of tears. He looks back at Dean and feels disgusting, feels like he’s what Black-Eyes calls him. Knows it to be true, no matter how hard he’s tried to fight it. 

_**That’s right, Sam.**_ Black-Eyes whispers against his ear, his voice so close that Sam can’t tell if he’s saying it inside or outside of him. _**You’re a freak. Dean would kill you if he knew you have a hard-on for him. **_ Black-Eyes moves to whisper against Sam’s other ear, still just as close. _**He’d fucking kill you, Sam. **_

Sam looks back at Dean, feels his chin shake with the promise of tears and he whispers quietly. “Please don’t hate me, Dean.” 

Dean is startled by Sam’s words, his arms dropping to his sides as he moves to close the distance between them. “I could never hate you, Sam.” His hand comes to card over Sam’s cheek, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. “Never, ever.” 

“That’s what you say now.” Sam feels himself flinching away from the heat of Dean’s touch, his body craving more—always more. 

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Sammy.” Dean reassures. “We’re gonna get you better, I promise.” 

“But what if,” Sam pulls Dean’s hand away from him, and looks up into his Brother’s eyes. “This is just who I am? Then what?” 

Dean scoffs, his hand dropping back to his side. “This is _not_ you, Sam. Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“What if it is?” Sam asks again, not letting it go.

Dean looks down at him, his eyes narrowing exasperatedly and then softening around the edges. “It’s not.” 

Sam lets it go, a faucet drip of truth dripping down the back of his brain. 

_I’m a freak, Dean. You’ll see. _

There’s a putrid smell that startles Sam to consciousness. He expects to feel the cradle of a crappy motel bed under him, but instead he feels upright and weightless. There’s a gurgling noise, sounds like a backwards babbling brook, but more violent. Sam strains towards the sound, every fiber in his body needing to know where it’s coming from, but the more he tries to decipher the sound, the harder it gets to reach for it. 

Sam blinks against blackness, against the thick feel of curtains being held shut. 

_**I was hungry, Sam. I told you; you didn’t listen. **_Black-Eyes makes a licking sound, like he’s slurping cake batter from the tips of his fingers. 

_What did you do? _Sam hisses against the black curtains of himself. 

Black-Eyes laughs darkly. _**You mean, what did you do? **_

**__**_I didn’t do anything! _Sam argues, his voice angry. 

_**Oh, but—Sammy… you did. **_Black-Eyes purrs. _**Don’t you remember? **_

Sam tries to think back to the last thing he clearly remembers, the only thing was Dean promising he’d stay up a while to make sure he slept okay. Of how scared he was to let go, his fingers white knuckling the single flat sheet he slept under. He was losing control more and more every time he slipped under the other side of his eyelids. He was becoming less and less himself and more and more like Black-Eyes. The line between them is blurring over and at times they’re indistinguishable. 

He thinks and thinks, but he doesn’t remember a single thing except for falling asleep with the safety of Dean’s gaze upon him. 

And just as his mind rolls that thought over, the black curtains open wide and his eyes burn as they try to focus on the scene in front of him clearly. There’s a body under him, a young man no older than twenty-five; his jaw is slack from being broken and his eyes are terrifyingly wide and lifeless. Sam looks at the man and then down to his bloodied hands, and suddenly he’s thinking back to that clearing where Dean’s lifeless body had laid and how those monstrous yellow eyes of a future him scalded him whole. 

Sam feels himself dry heave with the smell, with the sticky feel of warm blood on his hands and how the taste of something metallic lines his teeth thickly. Black-Eyes stands across from him, his eyes pinched as he stares at the disgust weaving its way across Sam’s features. Sam who is looking down at the man underneath him, focusing on the bite marks on his cheek and neck, of how his jaw aches with the recent memory of ripping into flesh—all for the taste of something red. There’s a pooling tide of euphoria that pours into Sam’s chest, his fingers reaching down reflexively, as though the movement is not his own and clenches his fists into the man’s polo shirt. 

_**Feels different, doesn’t it?**_ Black-Eyes kneels next to the body, to keep his eyes level with Sam’s. _**I picked this one special, just for you. **_His eyes sparkling with delight. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Sam questions, the feeling of exhilaration coursing through his veins. 

_**You can taste it, Sam. How it’s different from the rest, of how it tastes sweeter and feels somehow more visceral. **_Black-Eyes sticks his fingers into the hole in the man’s cheek, dips into it like it’s Fun Dip candy, his finger dripping with dark red. _**He wanted you to have this, to taste it. Said he’d do anything for his King. **_

Sam watches as Black-Eyes lifts his blood-soaked finger towards him, feels how his finger slips between his lips and how his mouth sucks instinctively even if his brain is on fire and screaming at him to stop. He licks against the flesh that looks so much like his own, his eyes rolling into the back of his head with the absolute intoxication that rolls across his body. 

_**That’s it.**_ Black-Eyes approves, a smile carving itself across his lips. _**Taste what is rightfully yours, let it wake the part of you that’s destined for greatness. Let it provoke your wants, Sammy. Because I know you want so much.**_ Black-Eyes removes his finger from Sam’s mouth and traces his fingers along Sam’s forehead. _**You just gotta stop thinking about it so much. You just gotta trust in your destiny, Sam. You were born to this. It’s in your blood already. **_

Sam’s eyes break loose of the black plates staring into his soul. The words ‘destiny’ and ‘born to this’ circle through his mind and lace themselves around his chest to squeeze. There’s a hysterical feeling that bubbles up from the pressure and despite the fact that his eyes ache with the promise of tears, he hears a laugh fall out of his mouth. It sounds jagged and distorted, sounds like it belongs to Black-Eyes much more than it does him. The darkness of it shakes Sam, has him reaching up with his hands and trying to stifle it, but the echoes of it still remain. 

_**You don’t have to say it, Sam.**_ Black-Eyes dips his finger back into the bloody wound at the man’s cheek. He raises his finger back to Sam’s mouth and Sam’s hands drop automatically, the last hints of his laughter descending into the air around them. Black-Eyes drags his finger across Sam’s bottom lip, Sam feeling the warm hue of red being painted there, of how his tongue darts out like a feral animal and laps it up hungrily. _**Every part of you, craves this. **_

“No,” Sam says, the heart of him trying to fight through the growing hum that sings through his body. Says it even though so much of him is saying ‘yes’. 

_**You need it.**_ Black-Eyes moves to rip open the man’s shirt, his fingernails dragging across blue skin. _**Oh, how you need it.**_ His nails digging into the chest and smiling wickedly back up at Sam. _**And there’s so much here; it’s all yours—you just have to take it. **_

Sam watches as his hands echo Black-Eyes’, of how his fingers curl helplessly against the man’s flesh, of how they dig violently and tear. He watches as ribbons of red plume, watches as his hands paint the man’s abdomen with his own blood, the way some might use crayola paint as a kid. The more that he sees it, feels it thrum, and tastes it—the more the darkest corners of his mind start to lift away from the edges. 

_**You’ll be the most beautiful King.**_ Black-Eyes whispers with admiration, his hand falling against Sam’s back as he leans forward. _**Hell will chant your name for lifetimes. **_

The last thing Sam remembers, is his tongue tracing one of the stripes of red, of the way it feels like drinking lightning right from the sky. Of how it makes him feel lucid and fucking unstoppable. 

Of how it makes him feel like the very thing Black-Eyes has always told him he would be someday. 

_A King._


	3. Chapter Three

When Sam comes to, there’s a stream of pictures flashing through his mind and a dizzying sensation that welcomes him back to the land of the living. 

The images move fast, he can barely get his bearings on one before another slides through his mind. One second his hands are laced through someone else’s and in the next, he’s staring into a stranger‘s face as their laughter turns into a desperate kind of pleading. He sees his hands wrapping coldly around their throat, like snakes wrapping around prey, of how they squeeze impossibly hard. Of how his own hands drain the life right out of a stranger’s eyes. 

It feels like he’s on some kind of carousel, one that spins faster and faster, the images flashing bolder and brighter. There’s the woods, the clearing with Dean’s lifeless body. Yellow-Eyes and a future Sam beckoning him to howl at the same murderous moon. The blackest oil pools smiles at him, a sea of endless red pouring out underneath him, of how he longs to drown in it. And as the images come faster and faster still, there’s a voice that breaks through the dark web of his brain and it’s calling his name. 

“Sam, Sammy.”

He makes the voice his focal point as he spins around and around on the nightmare carousel in his head. There are bloodied fingers reaching for his mouth, he can’t tell if they’re his or Black-Eyes’. Maybe it’s both. He watches as his shadow stretches across an endless path in the darkness of night, how the moon crowns him a monster and how Black-Eyes skips in the image of his wickedness. 

“Sammy.” 

There’s the voice again, shining through the cracks in his brain like an impossible sun. Sam’s cold, and the voice is so warm, he feels the bones within himself reaching for it. 

“SAM!” 

His name drives like an arrow into his chest, the images in front of him shaking apart as the darkness he’s been enveloped in starts to peel away one layer at a time. 

There’s a twinge of pain behind his eyes as they crack open onto a bright afternoon sky. His body feels corpse-like as he wakes from whatever fugue state he had been in previously. His consciousness takes stock of his body, counting every rib, finger and toe. And when he’s satisfied that he’s all there, his eyes scan the area trying to get a read on his surroundings—to locate the owner of the voice. 

A dirt road unwinds to his left and a forest lines up to his right. His body feels the crisp prick of dry grass against his skin. He squints back up into the sky, the rays from the sun splaying hotly over his face. A tide of panic collides with his heart when he comes to realize that he could very well be in the middle of nowhere, not knowing how he ended up where he is. 

Sam tries to move, lifts his head from the ground, but the second he moves there’s a whirring sound that explodes in the back of his head, making him yelp out loud and returning back against the ground. He swallows and his throat feels like it’s caked in cement, feels like it hasn’t known moisture in days. Fear is a sharp knife, and it digs into his side with the thought of just how long he’d been out, of how he got there, and if those images he saw were real. 

“Hello?” Sam tries to say, his voice sounding like a rusty car engine turning over for the first time in years. “Is there anyone here?” 

Nothing but silence greets him in return. That, and the squawking crow that circles overhead. It’s like he’s claiming Sam as his, warding off all others who might dare to have a taste. 

Sam tries to lift his head again and feels the same slamming sensation crash against his skull. He winces and raises his hand to feel for a possible wound on his head. When his hand comes into his line of vision, his eyes soak up the smears of red that color him from fingertip to elbow. The smears are dark and mixed with dirt and sweat. His stomach lurches as the image of a stranger’s slacked jaw and gaping wounds rolls across his thoughts. He feels the rising tide of bile creep up his throat, turns to his side and lets the contents of his stomach spill out across the ground like a popped water balloon. 

The act of vomiting seizes every muscle in his body. It has his brain whiting out, his vision sparking, and his heart fighting frantically against the ribs in his chest. But once he starts, he can’t stop—his body is rejecting every ounce of blood it took in. Sam watches as his stomach acid is tinted impossibly dark, of how it’s thick like oil and tastes like the very nightmare he saw when he first came to. 

When there’s nothing but dry heaving rocking through his body, leaving him weak and covered in a cold sweat, a sob falls from his lips. His bloodied fingers dig into the dirt around him as he stares into the dark red pool that just evacuated his body. He sees a distorted reflection staring back at him, and he swears in the afternoon light and the gleaming red of stomach acid, that his eyes are just as black as Black-Eyes’. 

He blinks the reflection away and cranes his neck around him. His eyes are met with nothingness, his chest choking on an anxious breath of oxygen. 

Sam slams his fist into the dirt and cries out the only name he knows better than his own. 

“DEAN!” 

It’s dark and cold. Sam’s stomach whines around the emptiness inside of itself. He’s been walking for hours along the dirt road, the landscape sprawling ahead of him like that scene in The Shining. It’s neverending; it feels like he could walk for days and still get nowhere. At least the sun fell into the horizon a few hours ago, giving Sam’s skin a much needed kiss of relief. But the cool embrace of night offers a whole other set of challenges he has to work through. Even with the sunburn, the cool air around him is able to sink right into his bones. 

He swears he’s never been colder in his life. 

Before he started moving, he realized he no longer had his cellphone with him. The question is, did he even take it with him in the first place, or did he lose it somewhere between point A and point B? He had spent a good hour pacing through the grass looking for any signs of it before he decided to get going. The thought of Dean pushes him on, of how he must be out of his mind with worry with his latest disappearance act and how he’s completely unreachable. 

Sam had hoped to find a payphone nearby, or a gas station with a newspaper so he could find out where he is and what date it is. He doesn’t remember how long he had been under, doesn’t know if it was hours or days. Everything inside of him is disoriented like a compass in the middle of The Bermuda Triangle. 

And more than lost, he feels well and truly—_alone_. 

As he walks, he doesn’t see a soul. Black-Eyes has gone completely radio silent. The only company he has is the crow that still squawks above him as he moves down the road. It’s been dark for hours, but the crow stays unwaveringly by his side, its shadow menacing even in the darkness. He tries not to focus on the bird above him, tries to keep his eyes peeled for any lights that might break the endless nothing in front of him. 

Sam thinks about his circumstances, thinks about how everything with Black-Eyes is getting increasingly out of hand, of how he’s losing chunks of time and waking with more vile and cruel memories. Of things he can’t recall if they were Black-Eyes’ fault or if they were his own, the line between them blurring over and becoming less and less clear. He thinks about the blood on his hands, of how it tasted on his tongue. If he closes his eyes, he can feel the intensity of its lullaby, how it sang sweetly unto him and made him feel alive in a way that’s hard to describe. It terrifies him that he lost so much control, terrifies him more that there were dark corners of him that actually enjoyed it—that celebrated joyously with the beauty of it. 

If Dean saw him as he was when he woke up, covered in blood and death, he wonders how he’d be able to explain himself out of it without mentioning his little friend that’s been following him everywhere he goes. Wonders how he’d be able to look at Dean in the eyes after knowing he hovered over a corpse and licked sickly against its pearling red wounds. Wonders if maybe Dean might even think him unsaveable at this point, wonders if maybe he’d be staring down the barrel of Dean’s gun someday soon. 

Sam wraps his arms around his torso and shakes the thought of Dean’s horrified face away. Sure, Sam might be sick to the core with the things he’s done with the nightmarish shadow that taunts him day and night, but the thought of Dean looking at him with disgust shreds him down to the bones. He loves Dean too much to ever disappoint him, he’d rather disappear and save himself (and Dean) from that eventual reality. 

Truth is, Sam isn’t sure there’s a real way out of the hell he’s found himself in. Maybe at once, in the very beginning, when Black-Eyes was a sometimes thing that was more creepy than cruel, maybe back then he could’ve seen a way out. But now, at seventeen and a half, with his whole life ahead of him, he’s had to make some impossible decisions to somehow thwart Black-Eyes’ plans right on out from under him. 

He thinks about the Stanford application he mailed in months ago, thinks about how his hands shook as he filled it out, because he’s never wanted anything more in his life. Stanford had become his emergency exit, one he didn’t want to have—but knowing he had no other choice. Stanford would hurt Dean, would probably crush him whole, but Sam knew that it would also save his Brother. That it would save him too. 

That it was the only real way he could save both of them. 

Even if it meant leaving everything he’s ever known and loved behind. 

Sam thinks about the letter he’s tucked away in his math book, of the fawning approval letter with his name written in a sea of other letters congratulating him for his noteworthy academic achievements, and how they’d be absolutely honored to have him attend in the coming Fall. He thinks about how he received it just two weeks ago, of how he’s kept it a secret, his brain trying to work out the details of just how to tell Dean that The Family Business just isn’t for him. Of how he needs to go, of how he craves for normal things—simple things. Of how he wants to wake up in the morning without the ghost of Black-Eyes clinging to his dreams. 

Black-Eyes has always made Sam believe that he doesn’t have a choice, that his destiny is unavoidable and set in stone. Told him that no matter what he does, he’ll end up in the same place: at the lowest point in Hell with the most vile and crooked things whispering his name. Told him that they will become one, that Sam will become the most beautiful caterpillar the world has ever known. Told him that the golden streaks in his wings will burn all those that dare to touch him, that one day he will be unstoppable and masterful. That every living thing would come to fall at the foot of his twisted throne. 

Most of the things Black-Eyes had told him ended up sounding like incredibly dark and twisted nightmares out of an overactive imagination. But as the days turned into weeks, months and years—Sam knows that there was more truth to those words than he ever could have thought. He can feel parts of him changing, blooming darkly in the bed of his chest. Black-Eyes gets closer and closer every single time Sam sees him. And the things he remembers after he loses time, always seem to be harder and harder to distinguish between who is who. Is he Sam Winchester, the boy without a home? Or is he Sam Winchester, the one and true boy king? Is he himself? Or is he Black-Eyes? Is it true when Black-Eyes makes him say they’re the same? 

Were they ever all that different to begin with? Sam just doesn’t know anymore. 

Stanford is a direct detour from The Family Business and Sam clings to it like a wrench in the cogs of his destiny. He prays most nights that when he leaves that Dean’ll come to forgive him. That maybe, somehow, he might be able to tell his Brother that he did it out of love. That he did it out of selfishness, to save him—even if he wasn’t guaranteed that he’d save himself as well. 

Sam stops for a break when he comes to the edge of a creek that winds itself narrowly in front of him. He greets the sound of running water gladly, the frogs and crickets singing into the night all around him. The first thing he does is strip down to his boxers and dip his body into the water, watching as his skin is purified from the lingering traces of red. Sam marvels at how the water is somehow warmer than the surrounding air, of how it comforts him and entices him in deeper. The minute his hands are clean enough, his throat constricts with the immediate intensity of thirst. He makes a cup with his palms and drinks mouthful after mouthful, his insides sighing with the hydration after a long day in the sun. 

When he’s had his fill, he finds himself floating on his back and staring up at the stars. He notices the crow has landed in a tree nearby, its black beady eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The bird caws at Sam and up into the sky, the sound still sending a small hint of trepidation along his spine. They stare at each other and for a reason Sam can’t quite explain, he doesn’t feel so alone anymore. 

A feeling comes over him like something (or someone) is watching over him. 

It’s unnerving enough to have him treading back for the edge, climbing out by stepping on the unleveled rocks that line the creek. The cool air nips at his wet skin and his teeth chatter as he reaches down for his clothes. He makes quick work getting dressed, hating the way his wet boxers cling against his skin under his jeans. As soon as he can, he gets moving again, a crawling feeling against his neck telling him that he’s running out of time. 

About another mile up the road, he starts to see a bright light off in the distance and he’s not even one-hundred percent sure what the light belongs to, but it has his stomach dipping low with the excitement of finally being closer to something of the living. His body screams as he breaks out into a run, his lungs heaving roughly as he tries to get closer to that light. 

The crow about him flaps its wings, dips down and squawks sinisterly at Sam. 

“Right back at you,” Sam huffs at the bird and it circles above him and keeps up with his pace. 

As Sam closes in on the light, he finds that it belongs to a house, the only one he’s seen in however long he’s been walking. The sides of the house are in ill-repair, the wood peeking through old white paint. The roof sinks lower on one side and all is dark except for the single porch light that illuminates the red front door. 

Sam stills in front of it, watches as the porch light makes a shadow of him, stretching out beside him. He pinches his eyes at the sight, tries to not see those black eyes he knows so well. The crow lands on the railing lining the porch and caws again at Sam, but he just ignores the bird and steps up the stairs and raises his fist to the door and knocks. The house remains quiet after the sudden noise of his knuckles hitting the wood, the wind rustling the leaves of trees lining the dirt road behind him. Sam waits a beat and then knocks again. 

“Hello!” Sam calls, walking over to the window to see if he can see inside. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m stranded and need to use a phone. I’ll only be a minute, I promise.” 

Sam peers into the window, but it’s dark inside and he can’t see any movement. He taps on the glass of the window and calls out again. 

“Hello?? Is anyone home?” 

The crow flaps his wings and the porch light flickers. Sam looks over his shoulder at the bird and can’t help but feel like he’s trying to tell him something, but what exactly that is—Sam just can’t figure out. 

Sam walks down the steps of the house and paces around the side of it looking for a car or any sign of someone being home. All he finds are old rims and tires lying haphazardly, there’s a half inflated soccer ball, and some gardening supplies. As he makes his way along the backside of the house, he sees another door and walks up to it to knock. 

“I’m sorry to bother you, I just really need to use your phone!” Sam cups his mouth and calls loudly, but is met with the same amount of nothing he had at the front door. 

He moves from the door and traces his way along the other side of the house back towards the front, unable to discern any hints of life except for the brightly lit porch light. Sam wonders why it’s on if no one’s even home, wonders who there’d be out in this complete nowhere who would even see it. 

“Hello!!?” Sam calls again, his feet slamming up the steps. “Is there anyone here?” 

The crow is still perched in the same spot of the railing of the porch. The bird hops a few inches along the railing and squawks loudly.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sam yells, turning around to glare at the annoying bird who won’t leave him alone. He glares at it and it stares right back at him, as if to say something Sam just can’t quite understand. Maybe he’s telling Sam to fuck off as well. 

Sam decides that if there’s a phone in the house, he needs to use it regardless if someone is or isn’t home. At least he’s tried to get their attention, he just doesn’t want to be stranded in Nowheresville for much longer; the night around him feeling more and more ominous by the minute. He reaches out for the door knob and turns it, only to find that it doesn’t fight him and he pushes the door open easily, the hinges squealing loudly. 

“Anybody home?” Sam calls out once again, his voice echoing against the walls. “I’m stranded out here and need to use your phone.” 

Sam steps into the house and feels as the wood floors under him give a little, creaking as he walks. His ears are pitched to sense any movement, and it’s unsettlingly quiet. As though the house is empty, but not really—not truly. Sam tries to ignore the eerie feeling and walks towards the kitchen, past the front living room. He scans the walls for a phone and sighs in relief when he sees one hanging on the wall next to the kitchen table. 

He picks up the phone and is even more relieved to hear a dial tone, he lets out another heavy sigh as he punches in the only number he truly knows by heart—Dean’s. 

The phone rings and rings and rings and rings. It never goes to voicemail, Dean’s voice never greets his ears, and Sam’s face scrunches up with worry. He hangs up and dials his phone number instead, and it also just rings and rings without ever going to voicemail. 

“What the fuck?” Sam swallows thickly and hangs back up to silence the ringing. 

The crow caws from the front porch, and Sam wishes more than anything he could throw the phone at the damn bird and silence it forever. He hates the way it has mocked him since he woke up, of how it hasn’t left him alone the entire day, of how he just wishes it’d get tired and leave him the fuck alone. 

He tries to think of what other numbers he can call and he remembers the hotel they’d been staying at, but not the number to call it. So he does what he’s done several times before, he dials 4-1-1 to try to get the number for it. The phone rings and rings, but this time is finally picked up. 

_ ‘We’re sorry, but the number cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.’ _

Sam feels his eyes burn with frustration, with hunger and exhaustion. He just wants to hear Dean’s voice, to have something real and tangible for him to cling to in a world of so much uncertainty. He licks his lips, bites the side of his cheek to starve off the tears and hangs up only to call Dean’s phone number again. His fingers push the numbers slowly and with intention, making sure no mistakes are made—making sure it’s Dean he’s calling. 

“C’mon…” Sam urges, his fingers curling into the cord of the phone. But the phone just rings on and on endlessly. Sam’s sure it would ring forever if he’d let it. 

He slams the phone back down onto the wall, where it clamors loudly and sends a ringing noise reverberating against the walls. What good is a phone if it doesn’t fucking work? Sam pounds his fist against the wall and it rattles the phone, his frustration finally blooming with tears out of the corners of his eyes. They spill over onto his cheeks and they feel like the kind of tears a kid cries when they lose sight of their parents, of how for a second you feel lost in a way that is simultaneously terrifying and hopeless. 

“Fuck, fuck _fuck_!” Sam yells, his body turning to push his back against the wall as he looks around him at the empty house. Once it had filled him with hope, when he saw it glimmering up ahead on the road, but now it is just as dark and void of life as everything else around him. 

His tears fall and the crow outside calls into the night. 

Calls and calls and calls. 

But no one answers him. Not even Sam. 

The sun is painting pinks and oranges into the sky by the time Sam finally raids the kitchen cabinets and finds himself an old can of baked beans to eat. Most of the kitchen shelves seem barren, with nothing but crumbs and dust left behind. It takes him several minutes to find a can opener, only for it to sink its teeth into the can, but finding he’s unable to crank it without it slipping off the rim. He throws the can opener against the counter and opts for a steak knife instead. It makes his wrist hurt trying to pry it open, but when he’s got half of the lid bent back, he brings the can to his mouth and tries to coax a mouthful of them into him. 

He’d spent most of the remaining hours of the night trying to call Dean, even trying to call 9-1-1 several times, only to be met with the same standard message he got when he called the information number. Every time he dialed, only to get nowhere, a part of him sank into the deepest parts of his soul, more and more of him knowing something was incredibly wrong—but not being able to put his finger on it. 

The crow keeps him company, sits perched upon the windowsill and stares at him through the glass. The bird can no longer look at him through the open door, as Sam slammed it in the face of its squawks. He wants to be left alone, but not really. He wants Dean more than anything, and his chest throbs with the growing worry that he won’t be able to find him in time. 

And that’s just it—in time for what? 

Sam doesn’t know, but as the crow yells at him from the window, he can’t help but think it’s something big. 


	4. Chapter Four

Sam wakes to complete darkness, his lungs gulping for oxygen as though he’d been holding his breath and hadn't realized it. His neck screams from the way it’s twisted, his head lying against his folded arms. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but from the way his body aches, he can tell he’s been out for awhile. His eyes squint to adjust to the darkness, trying to make out his surroundings and his stomach rumbles hungrily, it already having burned through the beans he ate earlier. 

There’s a tapping noise that shrieks through the house and Sam lifts his head carefully, letting his sore neck adjust to the weight and movement. He scans the kitchen and stops when he’s looking out the same window that the crow has never departed from. The bird stares back at him through the glass, its tiny eyes blinking at him, and there’s something about it that sends a shudder through Sam’s body. He watches as the bird leans back and throws its beak against the wood that lines the window frame. Watches as it squawks at him through the glass, watches as the black body of it jerks back and forth as though it’s crazed. 

The desperation of the bird alarms Sam, has him scrambling from the chair to stand up, his feet pacing towards the window to the bird that has done nothing but scream at him since he woke up in the ditch. It’s the only real thing he’s seen in more than a day, and its caws have been nonstop, and how they’re now full out screeches—as though the bird has had enough of playing nice. 

Sam slowly opens the front door of the house, lets the cool night air fill the stagnant, and warm living room. He notices the porch light is still on, and it illuminates the road in front of the house, making the line of trees across from it look dark and menacing. The bird hops down from the windowsill and makes its way to Sam’s feet where he flaps his wings and squawks angrily. 

“Alright, I’m listening,” Sam sighs, a part of him laughing because he’s been reduced to having words with a bird. He’s not quite sure if maybe they’ve both gone a little insane from the heat and isolation. 

The black bird pecks at his feet, its sharp beak colliding with his toes. He yelps and steps backwards, muttering obscenities as he scowls down at the bird and barks, “Hey! What the hell?” 

_SCREEEEECHHH!! _The crow seems to reply. He flaps his wings at Sam and hops away from his feet towards the edge of the porch. _SCREEEECH!! _He calls again. 

Sam looks out towards the road again and down to the bird, as he comes to the realization that the bird seems to want Sam to go with him. As though they need to make haste after all the time they’ve lost with the deadend of a house Sam found himself holed up in. They look at each other and Sam nods at the bird. 

“Okay, I’m coming.”

The crow flaps his wings and launches into the sky. 

Sam follows behind it, doesn’t even close the door to the house behind him. 

They walk / fly for maybe a mile before the crow calls down to him. Sam looks up and watches as the bird bears left and disappears into the trees. He stands on the road and looks into the woods, apprehension constricting his throat. The forest is thick and dark, looks like the kind of place people go into and never come out of, and Sam can’t make his feet move towards it. 

After a few seconds, the bird emerges from the trees and calls down at him; it flies behind him and swoops down to brush against the side of Sam’s head, as if to say, ‘_Let’s go_.’ 

Sam swats at the bird, curses at it and stares back into the nightmare of a forest that stands before him. He tries to convince himself that maybe it’s a shortcut, that maybe he needs to trust the bird and all of his screeching at him. After all, if he wanted to cause harm he could have pecked Sam’s eyes out back in that ditch, could’ve bitten right into the flesh of him and eaten him for lunch. The picture this thought provokes causes Sam to shake his head, trying somehow to unsee the violence of the crow’s beak against his face. 

The bird swoops down again and thumps him against the head. Sam swats after it and lets out a hesitant breath. His feet start moving towards the woods, and a blasé thought marches through his head that sounds like, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing to lose’. 

Sam slinks into the forest and he immediately notices how the blanket of midnight gets impossibly darker within it. He looks up to spot the crow and can just barely make out a moving shadow above him, its wings highlighted by the full moon that cascades through the trees. Sam feels himself swallow thickly, his chest tightening with something he can’t quite name and he swears on his life if he makes it out of wherever he is, he’ll kiss the Impala’s leather seats and hug his Brother tightly. He moves but remains vigilant of his surroundings, the entirety of his skipping heart dreaming of those two arms and four wheels that he’s always called ‘home’. 

They move through the woods for so long that Sam doesn’t even have to watch for the bird anymore, just listens which direction it calls back to him from. His focus is zeroed in on not stumbling over things that litter the forest floor, and the back of his neck constantly aware of the growing sensation of being watched. He’s not sure if it’s just the fact that it’s nighttime, or if it’s because he’s alone in the woods with nothing but that crow leading him through, or if maybe it’s a culmination of everything that has him on edge. That has him looking over his shoulder and straining his eyes into the pitch black space around him, just trying to make out anything around him that might have lungs and sharp teeth. 

Sam steps on a branch and it sends a cracking noise in all directions around them, so he waits as the sound echoes back and rattles against him. The crow yells down at him to keep moving, but before he takes another step, he hears the shuffling of footsteps somewhere to his right. His attention shoots in that direction, his eyes pleading with the blanket of black to grant access to his eyes, to let him see whatever it was that caused the noise, something inside of him knowing that he probably really doesn’t want to know. 

_SCREEEECH! _The crow calls from above, a small breeze moving through the forest as the trees around him talk about whatever it is that they see. Sam spins around, takes a step backwards and feels the heel of his shoe snag across the same branch that he’d just snapped. _SCREEECH!! _The crow shouts again and it’s followed by the same shuffling sound that’s now to his left. He cranes his neck into the darkness and feels his throat work around the growing knot of unease. 

“Who’s there?” Sam shouts into the blackness in front of him. 

The crow riddles off a string of thunderous caws from above, Sam notes how they sound desperate and he’s reminded about that invisible clock that’s been ticking in the back of his mind ever since he woke up in the ditch all alone. The crow sounds again and Sam looks up to see him circling chaotically above, swooping up and down as though it’s dangling from the sky by a string. Sam’s eyebrows furrow at the image and then drops his line of vision to stare back where the noise had come from. 

Only this time it’s not an endless pit of darkness that greets him—now he finds himself staring straight into glowing yellow eyes. The image of the future him standing over Dean’s body in the clearing rolls into him like a tidal wave and it has his chest seizing up. 

Yellow-Eyes laughs in the face of Sam’s distress and steps closer so he’s dipped in a slight hue of moonlight. Yellow-Eyes reaches his hand up to the sky, where the crow still begs for Sam to move, and he rolls his fingers tightly against his palm in a choking motion. His face contorts with effort, the yellow hue of his eyes rolling up into his sockets and he shakes his fist into the sky. 

Sam watches helplessly as he hears the strangled scream of the crow above him. Moments later the bird falls with a loud and calamitous _thud! _right at his feet, its wings splayed out wide as its body jerks with the last gulps of life draining from it. Sam looks at it and feels a part of him stirring with an emotion he can’t quite pin down, his eyes widening in horror as he watches the bird finally still at his feet. 

Seconds later, when he finds his voice again—he screams with terror. 

And Yellow-Eyes smiles sharply back at him in the darkness. “Hello, Sam.” 

Sam feels his body switch gears, feels his brain mentally decide if it’s going to fight or flee the scene and try to get away. And then suddenly, his body makes an instinctive decision and he’s slamming deeper into the forest, his lungs heaving heavily with panic. He only makes it a few yards before he sees Yellow-Eyes appear straight ahead of him, causing him to trip on his own feet trying to halt his steps. 

“You can’t run from me, Sam.” Yellow-Eyes sneers at him. 

“Fuck you!” Sam barks back, his legs pushing him off into the direction he just came from. 

This time he only manages a few strides before Yellow-Eyes appears directly in front of him once again. 

“Now, now—” Yellow-Eyes angles his face, his sharp jawline cutting into the moonlight. “That’s no way to talk to me.” He steps closer. 

Sam steps backward and holds his hands out in front of him, his body switching gears again as he steels himself to fight. 

“I don’t want to fight you, Sam. That’s not why you’re here.” Yellow-Eyes looks down at his hands and smiles condescendingly. 

“And where exactly is—_here_?” Sam spits, not missing Yellow-Eyes’ words. 

Yellow-Eyes chuckles at Sam’s front and takes another step closer. “Don’t you already know?” 

Sam scrunches his face up and shakes his head, his heart racing in his throat. 

“Oh c’mon, Sam.” Yellow-Eyes makes a face at him. “_Think_ about it.” 

There’s a moment between them that goes on in silence, of Sam rerolling the footage of what he remembers of the last two days or so, of what he did with Black-Eyes and how he woke up in a ditch. Of how time seems to be clicking over his head and then he thinks about the dead crow that squawked at him nonstop—or until Yellow-Eyes flicked it out of the sky like it was nothing. 

“_Think about it,_” Yellow-Eyes says again, as though Sam isn’t seeing something obvious, something big. 

Sam thinks about the blood on his hands, of how it’s still somehow clinging to the underside of his nails. He thinks about the way he drank from the man, about the way the entirety of his body sang with some kind of euphoric ecstasy with the taste of it. Of how it made him feel invincible and powerful, as though he could snap his fingers and have his way with anyone or anything that tried to stop him. 

Then Sam remembers the voice that called to him when he was still unconscious in the ditch, thinks about how it called to him sharply and prodded him enough to wake. Of how it was the very thing that instilled a sense of urgency within his bones, as though with just the tone his name was shouted, Sam could decipher the distress from whoever called to him.

Sam pictures the crow circling overhead of him, of how it found his body where he lay on the ground and somehow wordlessly promised to ward off all others. And as he focuses on the bird, the memory of the bird pops like bullet holes and bleeds into a memory he hasn’t been able to remember until now. 

Dean’s face is staring at him with an unreadable expression, his body tense as he holds a hand up towards Sam, as though he’s something to be feared. He sees Dean’s mouth move, but the words fall silently into the memory and Sam feels himself strain against the thick cotton of his brain, to somehow pick them out of the sand of his mind. 

It’s then that he sees Black-Eyes standing next to Dean with a proud smirk on his face, his lips covered with smears of red. Sam looks down at his hands and sees them covered in the same hue of red, just as they were when he woke up in the ditch. He angles to look behind him and sees two more bodies with faces he can’t remember, sees as a woman’s chest ripped wide open and a man’s neck is half-gnawed off. Sees all the blood, every single drop of it, and knows that between him and Black-Eyes they made a feast out of them. Sam drags his tongue across his teeth and can still taste their skin—the metallic taste of blood, unmistakable.

Dean steps closer to Sam and says something else to him, but Sam still can’t understand it. There’s a small pang of guilt that surfaces in his stomach, it launches into the sea of him like an anchor, promising not to go anywhere. The look on Dean’s face drains the blood right on out of his system; it’s one that’s filled Sam’s nightmares, one he had hoped to never see come to fruition. 

Disgust. 

Something within him breaks with the sight of it, has him floating in time with the brunt of it and it makes his heart shatter like the finest handcrafted glass. Sam’s face feels wet with the horror of his actions, of how he’s shouting at Black-Eyes to go the fuck away and to leave him alone. Of how he falls to his knees and begs his Brother to believe that it wasn’t him, that the violent scene behind him isn’t because of his own two hands. Of how he didn’t want to do any of it, that wasn’t him. And as he hits his knees with the grief of his actions, Dean moves instinctively to catch him but his fingers never reach Sam, his body instead slumping over with a stunned expression bleeding across his face, right before Sam’s eyes. 

He’s screaming Dean’s name, says it so many times his voice feels raw with the effort of it, he doesn’t understand what’s happened. He looks back up to Black-Eyes and is instead greeted with yellow. Sam is reaching for Dean when Yellow-Eyes throws up his hand at Sam and snaps his fingers. 

Darkness comes rushing over Sam and suddenly all he feels is himself falling—falling—falling. He calls out for Dean desperately as his hands fly through the air around him, trying to find something to cling onto. He feels his heart hammering against his ribs, feels his stomach sink into the endless depths below him and then all that’s left is his voice screaming into the nothing that surrounds him. And then everything fades into a deafening black. 

The only thing that comes after, is the sound of someone calling his voice as he lies in the ditch. The carousel of images spins a web around his head, trying to piece his brain back together. It goes so fast that it makes him sick, and Sam remembers puking his guts up too. Except now, he sees Dean’s face hovering over him, his words circling above him like the crow in the sky and that is when he finally hears his Brother’s shouted words—

_SAM!! _

_WAKE UP!_

Sam sees the bird in the window, sees it stabbing his feet with its beak, sees it thumping him upside the head and leading him into the woods. Something inside of him realizes without question, that it was Dean trying to get through to him the entire time. Knows that it was his Brother desperately trying to somehow lead him out of the maze of a mind he’s found himself lost within. 

“Bingo!” Yellow-Eyes says as Sam remembers the crow falling from the sky and landing at his feet with a loud thud. 

Sam looks from the memory of the bird shaking violently on the ground, up into the very eyes he’s come to fear even more than Black-Eyes’. He swallows down the alarm of anxiety that tries to make a home in his throat and tries to blink his eyes a few times to test if he’s actually seeing what he thinks he is—or if he’s really gone crazy. 

“It’s about time you and I had a little chat,” Yellow-Eyes says as he walks towards Sam and steps to squash the still corpse of the crow into the ground. “Just us boys.” 

Sam watches as the body of the bird breaks apart under the weight of Yellow-Eyes’ foot, everything inside of him knowing that Yellow-Eyes has got him where he wants. 

Well and truly—alone. 


	5. Chapter Five

“You were born to this,” Yellow-Eyes says darkly as the forest stretches and shakes around them. “And you will have it all. Everything.” 

Sam feels his brain slide against his skull as his breath is knocked from his lungs, the rug of the forest floor beneath him moving quickly. Trees disappear around them one at a time, as if they were nothing more than a figment of his imagination. The night sky above them pinches tight and then expands again, the stars falling like rain. Everything around them moves while they remain completely still, the world bleeding from desolate woods to a nightmarish scene. 

They’re standing in an open field now and there’s a hundred men and women facing him with black eyes. Sam looks to his side and sees Yellow-Eyes looking back at them, a prideful smile weaving its way across his lips as he hums approvingly. 

“Watch.” Yellow-Eyes instructs, moving to stand in front of the crowd before them. 

Sam watches as Yellow-Eyes raises his fist into the air, this one movement sending everyone before them to their knees with their faces down, worshipful. 

“I have Risen,” Yellow-Eyes calls out to them, his voice deep and powerful. 

The people before them raise their fists into the sky to match Yellow-Eyes’, as a thunderbolt of voices proclaim, “KING!” 

The wind around them stirs and Yellow-Eyes seems to glitter gold with the word _King_ still ringing in the air around them. 

“Welcome to The Claiming!” Yellow-Eyes shouts, and Sam feels his stomach curls in around the edges. “I know you’ve waited for this chance for so long, but now it’s upon us and you’ll all have your chance to prove your loyalty to me.” 

The same thunderclap of voices shouts, “KING!”

It rolls into Sam violently, and he looks at the crowd before them and wonders who they all are and where they came from. He thinks about the families they belong to, thinks about all the ugly and crooked things that made homes out of innocent bodies that don’t belong to them. And his mind crawls back and forth in his skull with the thought that a future him could somehow be responsible for all of it. 

“The goal is simple,” Yellow-Eyes looks over his shoulder at Sam, his eyes sparking balls of fire. “Find _him_ and bring him to me. The one who succeeds, will claim their rightful seat at my side. For those that fail, may you greet death in my name.” 

“KING!” They shout again. 

“You have this night. Our victor shall be crowned at first light.” Yellow-Eyes instructs. 

“KING!” The earth around Sam rumbles with the strength of their voices. He feels the vibration clamor against his legs and crawl up into his spine. 

“Are you ready?” Yellow-Eyes asks them and looks over to ask Sam. 

_Ready for what? _Sam thinks. 

_ **You’ll see. ** _

Sam watches as Black-Eyes steps magically from in front of Yellow-Eyes, appearing out of thin air. Yellow-Eyes and Black-Eyes look at him, both of their fists rising into the air. 

“Go.” Yellow-Eyes whispers, never leaving Sam’s eyes.

The black-eyed masses stand quickly and run in all directions, their bodies disappearing into clouds of smoke that dissipate the landscape in front of them and cover everything in fog. Sam can’t help but feel like he should be moving as well, as though that ticking clock is on his neck and counting down his last breaths. 

“Who are they looking for?” Sam tries to ask, his voice squeaking in fear. 

_**You. **_Black-Eyes licks against the back of his brain and it feels like a gunshot through his skull. 

The realization that he’s lost in his mind with two versions of himself, and how every darkly bent soul that’s crawled from the deepest pockets of the earth are now on their way to find him. It’s their implicit goal to bring now-him to the future-him, while Yellow-Eyes smiles into the night and makes everything around them electric. 

An image of Dean’s body lying in the clearing that flashes through his mind, and Sam’s heart slams against his ribs as he realizes that in order for any of those dark and crooked things to get to him, they’ll have to get through Dean first. HIs Brother might be able to handle a few, but not a hundred or more. 

Sam clenches his eyes tightly shut and shouts into the night, “WAKE UP!” 

Yellow-Eyes and Black-Eyes laugh and it echoes against the back of Sam’s brain, has him curling his fingers into fists and anchoring them at his sides as he yells even louder than last time, “WAKE UP!” 

The back of his eyelids shake with the force of his voice, almost like radio static, and then it clears, pitching up the ugly laughter around him. Sam feels his jaw clench around a flare of anger that burns brightly in his ribs, has his racing heart slamming with how much he means the words that roll over his tongue like sour candy. He steadies himself and opens his eyes, finding yellow and black looking back at him. The muscles bunch in his arms as his spine tingles with the intensity of his words—

“You will _never_ have me.” 

Two voices, both his own, one in his current likeness and the other much older, ring out in perfect unison. “It’s your destiny, Sam.” 

“Fuck destiny!” Sam seethes, refusing the promise of a golden crown and his ruling of the underworld. “_You will **never** have me._” 

The world around them cracks down the middle, exposing an impossible red sun beneath the surface where they stand. Sam watches in horror as hands from below reach up from the ground, of how in the shadow of the glowing red, they all look demented and black. And the only thing Sam can do is run—so he takes off in the opposite direction and screams into the nightmare around him, calls out for the only person who can maybe hear him. 

“Dean!!!” 

_**What have I always told you, Sam? **_ Black-Eyes’ voice sounds in his mind. 

“NO!” Sam yells, his legs burning from the urgency in his steps. 

_**I am you. **_Black-Eyes sounds again. 

“And you are me,” It’s Yellow-Eyes’ voice this time. 

Together they repeat menacingly—

_ **We are the same. ** _

“We are the same.” 

And with these words, Sam runs even faster, runs right into the glowing red that breaks apart everything in front of him. He greets it with hope, with some kind of belief that as long as he can be swallowed whole by it, he’ll lose them both. 

The world cracks open even wider and Sam squints at the magnificent way the red light covers everything in front of him, feels the warmth of it trace its rays along his arms and legs. And then he’s jumping into it, as if he’s propelling himself off a cliff ledge and all he knows is the warmth of the red light and the cotton that wraps around his brain and swallows everything he is conscious of, whole. 

And then there’s nothing at all. 

The next thing Sam becomes aware of is a conversation happening around him, but he’s still suspended in the blackness of himself—his body feels like it’s weighed down with cement. 

“Bobby, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Dean says, his voice gruff with lack of sleep. 

“We don’t have another choice, boy!” Bobby replies, and he sounds on edge. “They’re coming either way, we gotta keep him safe and this is the only way.” 

“And you’re sure the warding in here is tight?” Dean questions, even though Sam knows Dean’s probably checked the warding himself several times over.

“Who do you take me for?” Bobby barks back, sounding offended. “You do know I’ve been doing this for a few years? Your dad would have my head if it was anything less than perfect.” 

“Don’t worry about Dad; I’ll be the one you’ll need to worry about if anything hurts him.” Dean’s words sound like bold-faced threats. 

“Always the Winchester’s way.” Bobby huffs and then the sound of him clapping the back of Dean’s leather jacket. “Nothing’s gonna happen to him, I promise.” 

“Okay, give me a few minutes with him,” Dean whispers. 

“Alright, but don’t take too long we gotta get the rest of the house ready,” Bobby’s footsteps shuffle away from Sam, and there’s a loud sound of a heavy door being opened and then closed. 

After Bobby’s gone, all Sam can hear is Dean’s pacing steps and his even breaths, as though he’s thinking about what to say, or if he should say anything at all. If Sam could say anything, he would tell Dean he’s sorry, would tell him he’s so fucking sorry for everything he’s done. For all the lies and all the ways he’s tried so hard to keep this part of himself a secret, all in the belief that it was to keep Dean safe. He’d tell Dean that if he could go back in time to the first time he saw Black-Eyes, he’d go straight to him and tell him. Maybe if he did, things wouldn’t be as bad as they are now. 

Sam feels his Brother’s hand come to rest on his forehead, feels as his fingers dust his bangs up and out of his eyes. There’s the sound of something creaking, possibly with Dean sitting and Sam wishes he could lean into Dean’s hand, wishes he could wake up and crawl into those two arms and believe that it was all a bad dream like when he was a kid. 

“I—I don’t know if you can hear me, Sammy.” Dean’s voice sounds and it’s softer than the way it sounded when he spoke to Bobby. “But I just want you to know that everything’s gonna be alright, we’re gonna get you out of this mess, we just need you to hold on. So, don’t you go giving up on us. You hear me?” 

Sam wants to shout that he does, but he remains unmoving and weighed down. 

“More than that, I just want you to know that I’m sorry. I know we don’t say that very often, but jesus, Sam! I just can’t believe you’ve kept this from me for so long; I can’t help but think that if I hadn’t given you so much hell about it, you’d have told me. We’re not supposed to keep secrets from each other. Remember when you were maybe five and you pinky-promised me that you’d always be honest, Sammy? I’m the one person in this whole wide messed up world that you can tell anything to, even the things that scare the hell out of you.” Dean’s hand moves to press the back of his fingers against Sam’s cheek, the roughness of his knuckles dragging like kisses across the heat of Sam’s skin. 

Sam tries to strain against the paralysing blackness around him, his hands desperate to find themselves around Dean’s, of how he wants to lace his pinky around his Brother’s and promise him that he’ll never keep another thing from him. Even things like Black-Eyes and the Stanford letter he’s hidden from him. Wants to tell Dean he only did it out of love, only to keep the both of them safe somehow—even it all seems crooked and insane in the aftermath of everything. 

“Sammy, I hope you know that you’re the most important thing in my life. I—I don’t want to even think about the possibility of you not being in it. So you gotta fight whatever this is, you gotta pull through and you gotta be the little pain in the ass Brother you always are. I need you, Sammy. Don’t you quit on me.” There’s a sorrow in Dean’s voice that Sam hasn’t ever heard before and that Sam swears on his life that he never wants to hear ever again. 

Sam feels as fingers wrap around his shoulder and squeeze. The chair where Dean had sat squeaks as he gets up; there’s a warm press of lips against his temple and how it ignites every single emotion that’s been clinging to Sam’s heart for years. 

“Come back to me.” Dean whispers against Sam’s skin, the heat of Dean’s breath feeling cool against the wet press of his kiss. “_Please._” And then Sam feels Dean’s forehead against his, feels as Dean’s fingers trace over his cheeks intimately. “I need you, Sammy.” 

It’s not an I love you, but it’s as close as he’ll ever get to hearing it. A feeling of warmth coursing through his veins, his skin rippling in goosebumps as everything inside of him wants to reach for his Brother. Wants to wind his arms around the back of him, wants to hug him close to his body and tell his Brother that he needs him too. That he’s always needed him. 

That he will always need him. 

Always. 

And then Dean’s warmth departs from Sam’s skin, leaving him suspended in his darkness all alone. If he could cry or scream, he would do both. He wants to tell Dean to not leave him, wants to tell him that he’s not sure if he can fight this on his own, that he doesn’t know how to break free of the hold that Yellow-Eyes has on him—doesn’t know how to rip his destiny out of the hands of his future self and pave his own way. 

“If anyone can do this, it’s you Sam.” Dean says from far away. “You’re the strongest person I know.” 

Sam hears as the heavy door that moved before when Bobby left, sounds again. 

“Stay safe,” Dean whispers and then the door moves again, it rattles loudly as it comes to a close. 

Sam hears as the locks work, loud mechanisms rotating and coming to a halt, the echo of their movements reverberating in the room all around him. 

And then there’s nothing but silence. 

Nothing but him, his consciousness, and a body he can’t move. 

It feels like days go by in the darkness of himself, as though he’s somehow holed himself into a corner of his mind that he can’t break free from. And the more time that goes by, the more paralysing he feels with the knowledge that he has to get out of his mind somehow, but not knowing how to do it. He recites old books to himself, tells himself random facts that he read off of cereal boxes and newspaper trivia sections. He sings the songs he knows like the back of his hand, even the annoying ones that his Brother always listens to—part of him knowing that he likes them just as much as Dean, but refusing to ever admit it. 

He’s halfway through Highway to Hell when he feels the walls around him shake, as though there’s a fire-breathing dragon outside trying to fight its way inside. He hears the distant voices of Bobby and Dean yelling at each other, at whatever it is that they see. Sam’s heart catches in his throat with the quick assault of so much information and it has him crawling up behind his eyes and begging them to open, to do something—anything. 

But he can’t move. It’s just him and all the panic that explodes brightly in his chest like fireworks in July. It rattles his bones, has him gasping for air but somehow not being able to get his fill. And the more he tries to take it in, the thinner it seems to get. Feels like he’s sinking into his spine, feels like his heart is gonna lurch right out of his throat and take flight into the sky. 

He thinks of the crow circling overhead. Thinks of his Brother’s kiss against his temple. Thinks about how Yellow-Eyes strangled the bird right from the sky and how it fell at his feet. Thinks about how his Brother told him to fight, thinks about how his entire destiny hangs in the balance and if he doesn’t grab it first, who knows what will happen. 

There’s an image of him standing at the mirror with Black-Eyes standing behind him, and he knows very well what will happen if he doesn’t take control of his own life. Yellow-Eyes appears on the other side of him in the mirror, and he watches as all three of them say in perfect harmony—

“We are the same.” 

Sam watches as he throws a punch at the mirror, feels as his fist meets the glass of it, shards of it cutting into his knuckles. He watches as the image of all three of them splinters and breaks, of how instead of three pairs of eyes staring into the mirror, there’s now hundreds. He watches as his chest heaves with a rolling tide of anger and how his mouth distorts around a gut-wrenching scream. 

The power of his voice courses up and out of him, the weight of it being projected at the cracked mirror and those millions of yellow and black eyes. The broken mirror rattles with his voice, the pieces of it shaking loose and falling into the sink, clinking one by one. Sam watches as the light around them flashes on and off, his voice changing to the roar of something more evil. He collects his breath and hunches his shoulders forward, raising his palms to the remaining glass and gives every single ounce of energy he has towards those eyes staring back at him. He yells as loud and intensely as he can, the violence of his voice rocketing against the sharp shards, sending them up and flying off in all directions like a bomb just went off. 

When the glass and those eyes are gone, all that’s left is his heaving chest and the steady beat of his heart. It’s just him, his thoughts, and his body. And as he smiles at the reflectionless mirror, he can’t help but feel for the first time that he’s got this. 

That all he has to do is fight with everything in him. 

And now, he’s ready for war. 


	6. Chapter Six

Sam feels himself unraveling; his body falls against time and collides with one picture of himself at a time. His eyes slam open when each memory hits, as though he has to see the images to understand their realness. He pushes himself to remember all of the dark corners that Black-Eyes has kept from him, knowing that he has to see those parts of himself in order to overcome the hold Yellow-Eyes has over him. 

He has to see, he has to know. 

Only then can he reject it fully. Only then will the keys to his own destiny fall into his hands. Only then, can he unlock himself and be free from the tightly held chains of the nightmare he’s always been told would find him one day. 

The first thing he sees is how blowing out the candles on his fifteenth birthday introduced him to a presence that has haunted him every day since. A presence who molded himself from Sam’s very skin and stepped out of Sam’s body, how he looked and talked just like Sam—except his eyes were lucid pools of black. At first, they didn’t speak much—Sam just saw him from around corners and in windows and mirrors. Saw him when Sam slept and saw how those fire hands found themselves around Sam’s own, saw as Black-Eyes pulled him down a dark path within himself. And how he followed unknowingly, not understanding how very real it all was. 

Sam watches as his hands wind around the throat of a bird for the first time, watches as his fingers curl tightly around the throat and how he can feel the voice of the bird against his skin as he chokes it out with one impulsive squeeze. Of how it was the first time he realized how delicate life really is and how easily it can be taken from anything. He remembered how he cursed at himself, at Black-Eyes, and found himself puking up his guts with the sickly way it all made him feel. 

All these images, Sam has already come to know. But he wants to see the things that he’s scared to touch, to remember. The darkest things his brain has hidden from him, keeping him wrapped in a curtain of the unknown, if only to protect him from himself. But he presses against those curtains, has his fists in the fabric of it as he tries to pull them open. 

He needs to see it all, needs to see everything. 

The black fabric before him starts to tear, the strings of it pulling apart slowly, and Sam winces with the effort of his fingers as he pulls on them even more. He doesn’t have time to fight with the things that try to protect him anymore, he just needs to know all the despicable things he’s done at the hands of his darkest self. 

There’s screaming—crying that comes from the other side of the curtains, it gets louder and louder the more the fabric gives at Sam’s insistence. Through the tears, there’s blinding white light and it burns to look at it. Sam flinches his eyes shut out of reflex, but he knows he can’t look away. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes one painful slit at a time, he focuses on the bright light and tries to see through it, tries to see beyond the hurt it causes. And then the rip in the curtain severs all the way, his arms swinging open with two separate pieces of the black fabric. 

The screaming-crying is mindnumbingly loud, has him wanting to place both of his hands over his ears to drown it out. But he doesn’t move, he just lets it pour over him instead. Let’s the brunt of it rattle his bones, from his femur all the way down to his tiniest, the stapes in his ear. Knows that the only way out is through, and so he stands firm and unmoving against the hurricane of himself. The one that tries to warn him to go back, to forget the things he’s boarded up and stowed away from himself. 

And just when the intensity of it dials up impossibly more, to where it has him bearing down on his heels to prevent him from doubling over with the weight of it, the screaming-crying softens and the light before him pitches down. He takes a breath as he watches the tide of his trauma pull away from the shore of his brain and drain back into his memory pool. He feels it as the memories trickle down and fill him whole, feels it as the broken parts of himself try to reassemble themselves into something watchable. 

The weight of his hidden grief bites into him and has his feet sinking into the depths of himself, has his head whipping back with the pain of those memories as those screaming cries vocalize themselves from his own ribs. They echo through the hallways of his chest and up and out into the world around him and his unmoving body. Sam listens as they echo around the room he’s in, hears it as they reverberate from every wall and sound like he’s some kind of wounded animal that needs to be put out of his misery. 

As he physically weeps and screams from the assault of the unboxed memories, Sam finds that his thoughts are eerily quiet, the sort of quiet that comes before a massive storm. He finds himself in a wide open kind of grey space, some kind of room within himself. There’s nothing as he spins to look for a way out, just endless grey and his shadow dancing at his side. He takes a few steps in one direction and then looks over his shoulder to see that it looks just the same as before. 

There’s nothing for several minutes, and Sam starts to feel suffocated by the grey blanket all around him, his mind taking notice of how his mouth becomes parched and how his palms begin to sweat. He’s never done well with wide open spaces, especially ones that seem to swallow him whole as if he never existed in the first place. His mind is spinning its wheels against nothing when he hears the flapping of wings and a familiar caw to his left. 

Sam turns towards the sound and finds a red motel room door in the middle of the grey. His eyes find themselves glued to the number thirty-three in the center, and it mentally jars something he’s tried to forget. The crow that Yellow-Eyes ripped from the sky sits on the door knob and blinks its beady little eyes back at Sam. It squawks at him and Sam takes a few steps in that direction, every one of his footfalls causing a wave of hysteria to rush up his spine. And as he gets closer, there’s something that tells him he really doesn’t want to know what’s on the other side of the door. 

The crow screeches at him as he reaches for the door knob, flicking forward to peck Sam’s hands away, as if he’s trying to protect him. But Sam just shoos at it, waving his hand at the bird as it flaps its wings with agitation. The bird tries pecking at Sam’s fingers as they wrap around the door knob, but is no match for Sam’s insistence at opening the door. As he turns the knob, the angry crow dissipates like magic before his very eyes. 

He hesitates with his hand around the knob, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The metal in his hand shakes as he pushes in, his mind spilling over into things he’s prayed to forget. Everything inside of him warns him to turn back, to let go of the door knob and flee, but he stays sure-footed and unwavering in his resolve to make it out and back to Dean. 

And just as the thought of Dean makes itself a foremost in his thoughts, the door knob is ripped from his hand as the door flings open suddenly, leaving Sam’s hand still hanging in the air and his breath frozen in his lungs. There’s nothing but endless black inside, the kind that swallows things whole, that is so dark that you’d swear you’re blind, that consumes all the light and promises that it will never be seen again. 

Sam finds himself squinting into the black, trying to make out anything that might stand out, but there’s absolutely nothing to be seen. Nothing but the mouth of a nightmare staring back at him and begging for him to come in. A bigger part of him knows that to see, he must go in, and to go in might mean to be swallowed by the very thing that terrifies a large percentage of people—the dark. 

He’s a few steps in when he hears the door slam behind him, the red color swallowed by the black that surrounds him until there’s nothing left of it. There’s a trail of dread that carves itself at home in the pit of Sam’s stomach, a nail prick against the back of his neck as his brain works through the black to find something to grab onto. He moves forward, ignoring the way his feet seem to sludge through the black below him, almost as if it has hands reaching up to tangle around his ankles. 

The first thing he hears is the sound of someone retching loudly, the kind that isn’t born of normal sickness, but out of something more heinous. Of something so wicked that even the inside of you tries to evacuate itself from the scene. Sam swallows thickly and swears he can taste the sour traces of bile on his tongue, as though the memory he’s reaching for is so boldly lit within himself that his body begins to echo the trauma of it. 

Out of the blackness, a flashing white light cracks around him like a lightning bolt across a summer sky. It blinds him with its sudden appearance, has him reaching to press his fingers into the backs of his eyes to drown out the way they scream from the assault. The gagging gets impossibly louder, as though it slinks into his ears and becomes the only sound he’s ever known. And when he opens his eyes he sees the back of a body huddled down on their haunches, their spine stretching through the fabric of their shirt every time they heave. Sam focuses on the points of their spine, watches as it retracts and then comes back to looking like barbed wire. Focuses on the way he can feel those gasps for air in between his body’s emergency evacuation procedure, as though he knows somehow that the spine he sees belongs to him. 

As he gets closer, he can see the scene to the right, where a dog lies in a pile of limbs and gaping open flesh. The smell hits him as he takes the sight in, it fills him with disgust that comes to circle its grip around his throat. The details get clearer as he looks, his eyes unable to peel themselves away. He takes in the way the dogs head was clearly snapped, the way that it turns on itself unnaturally, of how its tongue hangs out of its mouth. His eyes travel down and he sees how the organs spill out of its abdomen, of how the intestines tangle themselves around what looks like its lungs. Sam’s unable to miss the way it seems like the organs were played with like some children play with their mother’s jewelry. 

Sam feels his knees buckle as his eyes take note of the blue collar around the dog’s neck, of how the silver of its tag glints in the light. There’s a sob that works its way up his throat, climbing out of his ribs like some kind of crooked ghost that’s haunted him for years and he just didn’t know it. He knew this dog, had taken it in as his own for a few weeks when they had a stint in Flagstaff. Sam’s hand instinctively moves in the air around him, remembering the smooth red coat of the golden retriever, his eyes welling with tears. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam says to the memory of the dog that once licked his heartbroken tears away. The dog that found him when his heart was lost and needing comfort; he always thought it was uncanny how they ended up finding each other, each giving the other a home—even if it was temporarily. 

He remembers thinking that he could convince his dad to let him keep it, working up all these elaborate and detailed lists of the many reasons why it would just make sense to keep him. Remembers promising Bones that he’d find a way, to not give up on him just yet. And then, just as quickly as the dog came—it left. Sam remembers the blind panic he felt when he woke up and found his body cold and lacking of all the warmth Bones had once provided. He remembers searching for hours, patting his leg and shouting out for the dog to come to him. 

Only Bones never did. 

Over the years, Sam had thought of Bones and always wondered what happened to him. If maybe his family found him, or if someone else picked him up. The thought of something more violent happening to him always whispered in the back of his mind, but he always pushed it off and tried not to think about it. But he never imagined this, never could have conceived that his hands could’ve ever had a part in it.

Sam moves to see himself as he’s next to Bones, wants to see his face and see the disgust he must’ve felt that night—of how he can still feel it throb through his veins like it happened just minutes before. He kneels next to the heap of fur and blood that once used to be a dog and he arches his neck down to look at his face and takes note of the tear tracks that stain his face, of how his cheeks are red with the effort of throwing up and how there’s a thick line of sweat, dirt and blood that streak across his forehead. The horror written across his face is evident, the regret and the upset hanging from his eyelashes. He gets lost staring at his face, his throat working through a knot of despair that crawls up his throat, of how he wants to comfort his past self and tell him it will be okay—even if it’s mostly a lie. 

He watches as his face tilts upward slowly, angling itself up at him unnaturally and then jumps back when it opens its eyes doll-like to expose ink-black saucers that reflect back onto him. There’s a look of terror that stares back at him, while the young face of him breaks into a monstrous kind of grin. 

_**Here, boy! **_It’s Black-Eyes’ voice, yet deeper and darker somehow, twisted in a way he’s never heard before. _**Bones! Where are you? **_

Sam sucks in his breath as he stands back up and steps away from the taunting voice of himself as Black-Eyes. He watches as his black-eyed self steps on the dead dog and steps closer to him. Sam tries to move away, but the black floor below him has his feet secured to the ground. 

_**What’s the matter, Sam?**_ Black-Eyes’ voice pelts in his direction_**. Don’t like what you see? Or wait, maybe what scares you is that some part of you does like what you see? **_ Sam watches as Black-Eyes points at himself and winks. 

Sam remains motionless, his heart lurching into his throat as Black-Eyes steps even closer, until he can feel the hot and sour smelling breath crawl across his face. 

_**He came so easily; followed me faithfully, like dogs do.**_ Black-Eyes cranes his neck at Sam, like a bird watching the worm its about to eat. _**Poor Bones.**_ And he swivels his neck to look at the carcass behind him. _**I guess no one ever told him to stay away from strangers. **_He shrugs and then moves to stare back at Sam. _**Look what you did, Sam.**_

The oxygen in Sam’s lungs finally gets moving at those last words, his brain boiling over the words ‘look what you did’. Every cell in his body firing all at once with one solitary thought, “That wasn’t me, I didn’t do that!” 

Black-Eyes cocks his face even more, his tar pools pitching even wider. _**But it was, Sam. What have I always told you? **_

“No,” Sam shakes his head as he refuses to say those familiar words that roll through his mind. 

_**You can run from this all you want, but at the end of the day—**_ Black-Eyes sneers in his direction. _**I am you, and you are me. **_

Sam growls against those words, “We are nothing alike!” 

_**We are the same, Sam.**_ Black-Eyes’ face softens slightly as a bloodied hand comes up to touch his cheek with reverence. _**We will always be the same, you and me. Always. **_

There’s something that physically breaks in Sam’s chest, some kind of balance that tilts one way after being so carefully weighed evenly. Sam feels it rip through him, up and out of his body with a violence that has him losing his footing. He feels his jaw wind around words that he has no control over, feels the way they taste upon his tongue and how a wave of bile finds itself at home in the back of his throat as the words hit air. 

“We are the same.” He hears himself say it, watches as Black-Eyes’ mouth echoes his words silently and knows he’s being played like a marionette. 

Sam feels a flare of rage ignite in his chest, feels as it boils to the surface and erupts from his limbs as he reaches forward with both hands and bears down on Black-Eyes’ throat. He squeezes tightly, his jaw clenching with the amount of effort it takes to remain in control, of how he can feel Black-Eyes scratching against the back of his brain. But he doesn’t give in to it, squeezes impossibly tighter and watches as Black-Eyes’ eyes bulge from his head. 

“We are,” Sam hisses, his feet ripping from the grip of the floor and stepping into Black-Eyes’ space. “Not the same. We will never be the same. I will never be what you want of me. I will never step foot onto that throne you’ve built for me. I’d rather die than ever be what you want me to be. I LOVED THAT DOG, I WOULD NEVER HAVE HURT HIM!!! WE. ARE. NOT. THE. SAME!!!” Sam is screaming so loud, his voice aches from the assault but he can’t stop himself. 

He watches as his fingers whiten around Black-Eyes’ neck, of how that crooked grin slides off his face and shatters to the ground, of how the black pools curl at the corners and the whites of his eyes bleed through. The black expands again, fighting for dominance and Sam beings to shake as he squeezes. There’s a hanging moment where Black-Eyes struggles against his fingers, where he growls darkly and squints menacingly at Sam. And then, the black recides completely and the fight against his fingers stops as the past him begins to sob frantically. 

“I’m so sorry, Bones!” Past him cries with strangled breaths and Sam lets go, watching as past him sags to the ground and weeps for the dog he once cared for. “It wasn’t me! I swear it!” 

Sam feels the heat of his own tears well behind his eyes, feels as he kneels to the floor and puts his arms around himself, somehow trying to comfort the part of him that is sick with what he’s done. “I know, I know.” He whispers to himself as the first tears fall from his eyes. He clings to his past self and whispers the only words he knows are true—

“He knew it wasn’t us—_**he knew**_.” 

He feels his past self absorb into him at his words, feels as that trauma fills his lungs and attaches itself to his heart. Feels as if the weight of that grief claws into his brain and promises to never go away. His shoulders sag with it as a sob rolls out of his lungs. 

“Good boy, Bones… good boy.” 


	7. Chapter Seven

Shortly after the memory of Bones disappears, another door appears. This time it’s brown and rickety, the door knob barely attached to the wood. Sam hesitates opening it, his eyes still achy with the heat of recent tears. He doesn’t know what awaits him on the other side, and he tries to mentally prepare himself for something just as equally horrendous as the last scene. He knows that he has to open the door in order to get to Dean, recognizes it as the only thing keeping him still clinging to any sort of hope. 

Dean. 

Sam twists the knob as he whispers his Brother’s name to himself and holds his breath. The blanket of darkness that enveloped him ever since he opened the first door is sliced in half with the brightness of what’s behind the second door. There’s so much light that Sam has to shield his eyes from it, the contrast has his eyes screaming in their sockets and pleading with him to look away or close his lids. But all he does is squint harder into the white light, his raised hand the only reprieve. 

Before he knows it, he’s swallowed up in it as it assaults him from all sides, feeling like the dull blade of a butter knife dragging itself against his brain as a memory tries to unfold itself carefully. There’s a fluttering in his ears; it sounds like someone flipping through the pages of a book, and it gets louder and louder until there’s a deafening _THUMP _that causes his feet to struggle for balance. He’s holding his hands out from his sides as he waits for the spell of dizziness to fade away and when it clears, he sees a brightly lit motel room. The bedding is floral and the kind of green that’s straight from the sixties. When his eyes scan across it, something trembles in his gut as his brain fumbles to remember what he’s looking at. 

_“Dean?”_ It’s not his voice, but a woman’s. _“You here?” _ And it’s followed by the rapping of nails against a window. 

Sam turns around and sees his past-self standing by the door with his fingers on the sliding lock chain.

_“Hello?” _The voice from outside calls again. _“Dean?”_

His past-self unlocks the door and pulls it open, his body remaining hidden between the door and the wall behind him. Sam watches as a woman waltzes over the threshold with a smile on her face as she takes in the empty room before her. Her expression dissolves into irritation as she sets her purse down on the table. She steps further into the room and arches her neck around the room again, still not seeing anyone.

_“Alright,” _She says. _“I get it—haha—you got me!” _

Her voice is still ringing through the air when Sam watches the door behind her fling shut loudly. Sam and the woman jump at the sound of it, both of them fixing their attention to what’s behind the door.

_“Who are you?” _She chokes out, her hand coming to rest on her rapidly rising and falling chest.. 

_“Doesn’t matter,” _Sam watches as his past-self disengages from the wall and steps forward toward the girl. _ “At least it won’t in the greater scheme of things.”_ And his eyes roll to black. 

Sam stops breathing as he watches his past-self raise his hands and effortlessly slam the woman against the wall across the room. Her body hovers off the floor and she chokes on an invisible press against her throat, her fingers clawing at her neck as she tries to free herself. And all Sam can do is watch his past-self walk across the room slowly, a crooked smile weaving itself across his lips. 

_“You’re all the same.”_ His past-self spits. _“There’s one of you in every town we stop in, always so ready to give it all away to Dean. He doesn’t even have to try, you’re all like bitches wagging your fucking tails at him. And you can’t even be happy with one lick of him, you gotta come foaming at the mouth for more.” _

The woman’s face scrunches up, her legs fighting for purchase against the wall. 

_“All I had to do was send one little text from Dean’s burner phone and here you are, all dressed up and ready to look pretty in his bed.” _His past-self mocks and motions to the beds against the wall. _“Well, sweetie, I got other plans for you tonight.”_ And the words are followed by a haunting kind of laugh. 

Sam feels his heart race up in his throat as his past-self paces closer to the woman pinned against the wall, his spine rattling with panic. It shifts into full blown horror when his past-self pulls a long hunting knife out of the waist of his jeans. He moves it slowly, twists it and moves to run his thumb across the sharp side of the blade. 

_“I wonder if I you can look pretty for me too?” _His past-self questions as he comes to drag the tip of the blade against the wall around the shape of the woman. _“What do you think?” _

The woman shrieks as the blade of the knife makes a _clink-clink-clink_ noise close to her ear. She tries to struggle away from it but she remains pressed firmly against the wall, at the mercy of whatever his past-self has planned. Sam steps closer to his past-self, something inside of him wanting to be able to stop the nightmare that’s unfolding before his eyes. As though if he tries to interfere he could prevent it altogether, but the rational side of him knows it’s only a memory and what happened, _happened_—he can’t really change it. 

He can only remember. 

His past-self doesn’t tease much, only scaring the woman enough to make it worth the effort, to make the wicked part of him stir awake with some kind of sickly tasting euphoria. And then, just as quickly, the woman’s body is tossed from the wall to the edge of one of the twin beds. His past-self makes quick steps, juggling the knife back and forth between his hands. 

_“I wonder what Dean would do if he saw you now,” _His past-self talks to himself as much as the woman thrashing her limbs on the green floral covered bed. _“Do you think he’d think you’re pretty like this?” _And there’s nothing but the sound of his arm moving through the air as the blade comes slicing into her abdomen. _“Maybe if you spill your **guts**...” _ The way the word ‘guts’ is enunciated darkly has Sam swallowing his tongue with an undeniable knowing of what’s about to happen. 

Sam watches as his past-self works methodically, twisting the knife and carving the dull edge of it through her stomach. And when he’s bored with that, he pulls it out and quickly drags the bloodied blade across her ribcage, leaving a trail of red in its wake. His past-self laughs and it sounds thunderous in the quiet room as the woman gasps futilely for oxygen, the massive internal bleeding drowning her slowly. And then just as quickly as she was yanked across the room a few moments ago, the woman is pulled without being touched from the bed and slammed down onto the floor. His past-self straddles her body and smiles as he shakes his head. 

_“He will always be mine.”_ And then the dripping knife whips across her neck before he stabs straight through it with a mindnumbing crack as the blade grinds against her spine. “_**All mine**._” 

Sam feels his knees give out at the words, of a blatant confession of one of his deepest secrets. The scene before him mimics the millions of times he’s wished all of Dean’s conquests into the afterlife. He feels as sick as he was in the previous memory, feels like he could empty the entire contents of his body and he’d still be trying to spit up more. He wonders honestly how many hours he’s spent quietly boiling with rage every time his Brother went out and didn’t come back until the next morning, everything in his body knowing exactly what Dean was up to. There has never been anything Sam’s wanted more than to be the one his Brother chose to keep warm on those long lonely nights. But Dean never looked at Sam that way; how could he? Sam knows he’s sick for even wanting it in the first place. Yet, here he is watching his past-self tear apart a woman that dared to look twice at his Brother. 

When there’s nothing but blood and a horrifically carved up body, Sam watches as his past-self rips his eyes away from the body splayed on the floor and up at him. And the minute those dark pools meet his, yellow spills into them like honey dripping across a midnight sky. His face contorts with a new expression, one that looks at Sam with wonder and pride. 

“This was the easiest one yet; all that anger inside of you was so eager and ready to stake your claim on Dean. I barely even had to nudge you at all.” Yellow-Eyes’ voice comes out of his past-self and Sam’s mind bends trying to understand what is happening. Of how his older menacing voice could fall out of his younger self so easily. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope, the versions of him stay the same but the voices are always changing and yet somehow the same. 

They’re all him. 

“This was the kill that ensured that I would exist, that the great prophecy of our destiny would be fulfilled.” Yellow-Eyes moves from the body he straddles and looks at his bloodied hands. “You should hear them sing your name, Sam. The belly of the earth roars with it; there’s souls that await your arrival on bended knee, just for the chance to serve—to see you take the throne that was built for you.” 

Sam feels his fists curl at his side, a burning comet sears its way across his chest and ignites a pit of anger within himself. His jaw tenses as he watches Yellow-Eyes dip his mouth to lick at the red stains covering his palms There’s something so animalistic about it, something spineless and depraved. It’s like watching the ugliest parts of yourself devour any semblance of good there ever was, as though he can feel the good parts of himself disappear with every second he remains in the memory around him. Something inside of him tells him that if he doesn’t act fast, Yellow-Eyes might eat him whole and spit out whatever crooked version he proclaims will be. 

“You know,” Sam says to Yellow-Eyes, his voice nonchalant. “I remember her; _Hannah Klein_ was her name. She’s the one that told me I could choose whatever life I wanted, that I could go to any college—that I was just as smart as I was brave.” 

Yellow-Eyes bites the inside of his cheek and pulls his eyes tight to look at Sam, considering his words. “She was a distraction, that’s all.” 

“Is that why you made me kill her?” Sam moves forward and feels for the knife that is usually strapped to his leg under his jeans, ensuring it’s still there. “Because she threatened your plan? Is that it?” Sam’s tongue curls against the roof of his mouth and his voice sounds like poison. 

“It was all _you_.” Yellow-Eyes raises his hands up as Sam edges closer. “Well, _a part_ of you.” 

“No part of me would ever do this!” Sam bites, waving his hand at the scene on the floor. 

“But you did, Sammy.” Yellow-Eyes purrs and it grates Sam’s nerves. 

“Maybe those are my hands, but they’re not my own actions.” Sam tries to calculate the timing of grabbing the knife by his leg. “It’s why you hid it from me; tucked it away in a black nightmare box for me to find some rainy day. Put it so high on the shelf that you were convinced I’d never find it in the first place.” Sam steps closer, almost toe to toe with Yellow-Eyes. “But guess what?” Sam whispers and it sounds menacing in a way that makes the hairs on the back of his own neck stand at attention. “_Here I am._” 

Sam lunges for the knife and pulls it out effortlessly, the glint of it in the lamp light catching Yellow-Eyes’ attention as Sam tries to keep his balance with it out in front of him. 

Yellow-Eyes’ lips curl at the corners, rolling up like the corners of a used book, as though the challenge Sam presents pleases him. He raises his palm and the bloodied knife that’s wedged into Hannah’s ribs sails through the air between them and lands within his grip. He paces right and Sam paces left; they circle each other like vultures and Yellow-Eyes raises his eyebrows with a dare—asking if Sam’s bold enough to make the first move. And Sam echoes the dare back, both of them ready and willing to throw the first swing. 

Sam steps into Yellow-Eyes’ space and swings his knife into the air, aiming for the blood pumping organ that will end it all. But for as fast as his arm moves, Yellow-Eyes moves even faster, sliding back and away from Sam’s aim. Yellow-Eyes laughs, as though Sam’s attempt is nothing more than meaningless child’s play and he moves to the right, his eyes glowing bright as he swings for Sam’s neck and ends up only grazing the edge of Sam’s shoulder. Sam recoils as the blade of Yellow-Eyes’ knife bites into his flesh, but uses the searing pain as motive to jab his own knife back in Yellow-Eyes’ direction, this time making a connection. 

A deep growl leaves Yellow-Eyes’ mouth as Sam looks down and sees his knife wedged between Yellow-Eyes’ ribs. The evil sound intensifies and Sam feels as the knife in his hand is pushed back against his palm, his arm struggling against the invisible force. The butt of the knife shakes in his palm and he clenches his jaw with the effort it takes to not lose control of his own blade. But then, Yellow-Eye’s mouth opens wide with a terrifyingly deep howl and the blade is forced from Sam’s hands, flinging itself across the room to bang against the wall and clamor to the floor. 

Sam is left with little time to process what’s happened when he finds himself sailing backward, his back colliding with the glass of a picture frame. He feels the strength around his torso as he tries to fight against it, his back arching away from the wall only inches before he’s slammed back even harder. He glares across the room and watches as Yellow-Eyes’ hand is out in front of him, a look of absolute rage woven across his features. 

“You will kneel to your destiny, boy.” It’s a demand, not a question. “And if you don’t, I will _make _you kneel.”

There’s a tremor of fear that rolls through Sam’s body at Yellow-Eyes’ words, and they hang in the air between them like the final nails in Sam’s plan to escape the inevitable. A small whisper clings to the back of his mind and it says, _‘maybe there’s no other way.’ _But as soon as he registers that thought, he pinches his eyes shut and pushes against it. 

Where there’s a will, there’s always a way. 

Always. 

And he’s not ready to give up the fight just yet. 

“You can’t make me do anything.” Sam spits, his legs sliding against the wall behind him trying to find any kind of grip. “_Screw you_.” 

Yellow-Eyes’ body glides across the room, his body motionless, until he’s standing right before Sam. “No, Sam.” He seethes, his teeth rattling with his words. “You will,” Yellow-Eyes’ hand reaches up and makes a choking motion and Sam feels the oxygen in his lungs give out. “And there’s nothing you or Dean can do about it.” Sam feels as his body leaves the wall, feels as the weight of him hangs like a doll midair. He struggles against the force at this throat, but its unrelenting and every fiber in his being screams with the need for air. 

Sam feels his consciousness white out around the edges, feels his brain go cotton soft and dizzy with the lack of oxygen. He feels himself relaxing into the promise of nothing, when the hotel room door handle shakes violently. A second later, a pounding fist echoes every shake of the handle. Both him and Yellow-Eyes look at the door, him dangling in midair and Yellow-Eye poised with this clenched fist. 

“Sammy!” A voice calls, and it sounds so much farther away than just beyond the motel room door. It’s like it’s quietly scratching at the back of Sam’s brain, trying desperately to reach through the web of sleep and lack of oxygen. 

Sam knows it’s Dean, knows that it could only ever be him. Knows that if Dean’s there, then Sam has got to fight harder against the invisible force of Yellow-Eyes’ fingers around his throat. Sam feels himself reaching for the muffled voice, everything inside of him yearning for the reprieve of his Brother’s reassuring comfort. And as he reaches with every bone in his body, he feels himself float closer to the ground, until his feet make contact with the carpet. 

“Sammy!” Dean’s voice comes in a little louder, the motel room door pounding even louder as the glass of the window also rattles. 

Sam closes his eyes and pictures Dean’s face. He thinks about the freckles that dot the bridge of his nose, of the way his eyes shine bright green in the morning sun, of how his smile is the only light Sam has ever needed. And as he puts the puzzle of his Brother’s face together, he feels Dean’s lips as they brush against his ear and say loud and clear, “Fight goddamnit!” 

And just like that, Sam’s eyes slam open and he feels his mouth moving in Dean’s name, the force of Yellow-Eyes’ grip breaking from around his neck. He yells Dean’s name again, this time he screams it until his voice is raw and he watches as Yellow-Eyes sails backward, his body slamming into the TV stand and dragging up until his shoulders pin themselves against the wall. Sam reaches for his knife on the other side of the room and it sails through the air and collides with his palm effortlessly. And without thinking, he throws it like a dart and watches as it impales Yellow-Eyes right in the chest. 

“Bullseye.” Sam says, as the body of Yellow-Eyes flashes and cracks like sparks under the skin. 

The power in the room surges, bulbs and glass breaking, until Yellow-Eyes’ body slumps to the ground with a thud. 

Sam stares across the room in the darkness, his lungs heaving with adrenaline and trying to catch his breath. He feels as his Yellow-Eyed self soaks through him, riddling him with panic with the electric way that lightning bolt fire crashes against him. Feels as the darkness around him pitches even darker with the taste of ash on his tongue. Feels as the thrill of the kill weighs through him unbalanced and cruel. It has him hunching over and digging his fingernails into his knees with the ugliness of it all. 

He wants to run, to cry, to close his eyes and never live another day. He feels pulled apart and empty, the entirety of his soul begging for some kind of relief. 

Yet, before he can do anything else, the motel room door slams open and a bright light filters into the room. Sam strains against the light, his eyes screaming with the sudden assault. He wants to resist it, tries to even, but feels himself be pulled towards it. His feet stumble forward clumsily at first, but his footfalls pick up speed until he’s standing flesh with the doorway. 

And before he can talk himself out of it, he takes a deep breath and walks across the threshold. 

The bright arms of that piercing light tangles all around him and swallows him whole. 


	8. Chapter Eight

“Sammy!” Dean’s voice rattles through Sam’s mind and jars him from the suspended state of unconsciousness he’d been stuck in. “Sam!” Dean’s voice comes again, and it lands like a thunderbolt against Sam’s spine, spreading a tingling kind of warmth through his extremities. 

Sam tries to turn his head towards Dean’s voice, tries to open his eyes and dig himself out from whatever hold Yellow-Eyes still has over him. But the more he tries, the more he feels himself slipping back into the deep end of liquid black. His stomach drops out as he feels himself move upward, his arms and legs dangling beneath him until his back collides forcefully with something solid, and it screams in pain with the sudden assault. 

_**You can’t get rid of me, Sammy. **_ Black-Eyes whispers venomously, and Sam feels fingers wind themselves like roots around his throat, pressing tightly until he’s denied oxygen completely. _**I think it’s time for Dean and I to have a little chat. What do you think? **_

Sam’s throat works under Black-Eyes’ hold, but he can’t get out a word. Instead, he feels his own hands reaching desperately to loosen the choking grip. 

“Bobby?” Dean shouts, and it’s followed by the clicking of a shotgun. “You can’t shoot him!”

“What the hell are you saying, Dean? How do you think we’re gonna get him down from there? He’s gonna claw his fucking neck off before we get to him,” Bobby bites back, and his words are followed by the shuffling of feet. 

“Noooo!” Dean yells, and Sam hears the crack of the shotgun going off. The entire space around them vibrates with the recoil and then the sound of metal clattering to the ground.

Sam feels his eyes slam open when the bullet nips his shoulder, knows that it was dipped in holy water by the way Black-Eyes’ fingers give around his neck. His jaw unhinges and he hears himself scream loudly. 

“Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters angrily. “Sam! Can you hear me?” 

A growl rumbles up Sam’s throat and evacuates his mouth. It sounds crooked and violent. 

“You will pay for that!” Sam feels his lips move, hears his voice, but knows distinctly that it’s not him—that it’s Black-Eyes. “And I will _make **him**_ watch.” 

Sam stares down at his Brother and Bobby, their necks craning upward at him. It becomes clear that the powers he unleashed within himself trying to defeat Yellow-Eyes have more hold on him than he realized. He doesn’t know how long he’s been pinned to the ceiling like a rag doll—just like his Mother once was. He was too young to remember that fire, but somehow the image of her screaming flashes behind his eyes. His stomach sinks with it, his eyes loosely focused on Dean’s exhausted expression, as though Dean is seeing the same memory behind his own eyes. 

“Who are you?” Dean spits, his face hardening with the question. 

“I am Sam. He is me. We are the same,” Black-Eyes mutters the familiar words, moving around in Sam’s mouth like gravel. 

“I don’t want your fucking riddles. Tell me who you are!” Dean steps closer until he’s directly under Sam. 

“I am who he is destined to be. The greatest Boy King Hell’s ever seen.” 

“Boy King?” Bobby mutters the words and Dean shoots him a look. Bobby shrugs his shoulders and steps closer to the shotgun that lies on the ground beside him. 

“What do you want?” Bobby questions, and Dean moves his attention back to Sam. 

“What I’ve always wanted.” Black-Eyes barks back. 

Sam feels himself move down from the ceiling, his body righting itself as it descends back towards the ground. He stops right before his toes make contact, until he’s eye-for-eye with his Brother. There’s a haunting moment that hangs there, where Dean doesn’t breathe and Sam feels a coil of electricity curl within him. And just before he feels like he’ll explode from the tension, it snaps. He watches as his hand shoots out, his fingers curling around Dean’s neck to squeeze. 

“_**Him.**_” The words slither through his teeth and rattle throughout the room like poison. 

Dean tries to fight against Black-Eyes’ grip, his face reddening with the effort. Sam can feel Dean’s voice box as it tries to work around the words, as his Brother tries to tell him that he can fight this. That he has to. 

“S-ss-m.” Dean chokes out. 

Sam feels as Black-Eyes squeezes harder in response, his ears picking up the metal of the gun cocking behind him. Dean raises his palm up in Bobby’s direction, his eyes darting from Sam to Bobby behind him, somehow trying to get Bobby to stand down. Instead, Sam feels the barrel of the gun dig against his spine. 

“You kill me,” Black-Eyes hisses. “You kill us both.” Sam feels as his body leans back into the barrel of the shotgun, knows that it’s a dare. 

For a second, Sam feels himself succumb to the thought of Bobby putting him out of his misery. Maybe the world would be better for it in the long run, without Sam and his upside down destiny. God knows he’s already got enough blood on his hands, his soul tainted with the thickness of evil that’s already been evoked within himself. He wishes he could tell Dean that he’s sorry, that it’s okay, that it’s probably for the best. 

“S’mmy,” Dean pleads with Sam. “Fight!” 

The word is still clinging to the air when they move effortlessly across the room until Dean’s back thuds against the wall. Sam’s feet meet the floor as Dean’s lifted up until his feet are scrambling for purchase. Dean chokes as he struggles against the weight of himself cutting off the remaining air in his lungs. His eyes go wide as he silently pleads with Sam to do something, _anything_—before it’s too late. 

Sam locks onto Dean’s gaze and feels every reason he previously had to fade into the background. What is best, doesn’t matter. What does, is Dean. It’s the fact that they’re the only thing the other has in the great big messed-up world. If there’s anything to protect, to fight for, to never give up on—it’s Dean. As long as he’s there, alive and breathing, there has to be hope. 

There just has to be.

Sam tries to center himself, to feel where he and Black-Eyes separate, and grasp for the strings of himself that he can hold onto, so he can take back control. It takes him a few beats to curl his fingers around the reins within himself before he’s pulling back as hard as he mentally and physically can. He screams powerfully inside of himself, desperate to turn all his rage into the energy he needs to put Black-Eyes out once and for all. And just as he wails even louder, his vision clears and then goes fuzzy again. The grip around Dean’s neck gives slightly, and Sam feels himself sigh with relief as Dean takes a gulp of air. But mid-breath, he feel his fingers curl even tighter around his Brother’s neck. Dean’s throat squeals with the pinched airflow, his lungs wheezing on empty air. 

Dean’s eyes close as he leans back and tries to kick at Sam, his fight or flight instinct kicking in. Sam feels Dean’s boots connect with his ribs violently, and knows without a doubt that they’re cracked. The pain travels up his spine like searing fire, making him catch his own breath. His vision clears with the pain and then hazes back over, Black-Eyes unrelenting in his quest to watch Dean’s final breaths litter the room around them. 

“I’m sorry, boy…” Bobby’s voice comes from behind Sam. “There’s no other way to fight whatever this is. Your Dad always knew this day might come to pass, just never thought it would be this soon.” 

The regret in Bobby’s words clings to the air and even though the barrel of the gun isn’t pressed against his back still, Sam knows it’s raised and ready to fire. He looks at Dean and tries to say a thousand things, but he can’t make his own mouth work around any of them. The only word he’s left with is the only one that ever mattered to begin with, so he says it soberly and with every ounce of love he can manage. 

“Dean…” Sam hears his voice ring out beautifully. 

Dean looks at Sam and nods, keeping his eyes with Sam’s for a moment as they wordlessly tell one another they love each other. No words were ever needed for how they felt to begin with, because it was always too big to fit into one word. It could never be contained in syllables; it’s too infinite and unyielding. 

Before Sam can think of anything else, the explosion of a gun going off rattles the whole room around them. It as his ears ringing with the assault of it, his eyes pinching closed on instinct alone. There’s metal clanging against the floor, and it must be Bobby’s hands at Sam’s back, trying to pull him off and away from Dean. And with closed eyes, he waits for the blackness that he knows is coming, for the white-heated pain to crawl through his torso and for the silent relief of it to wash over him and coax him into the next world. He waits and waits, the presence of consciousness never leaving him. Instead, he feels his stomach fill with a carbonated kind of anxiety as seconds turn into a full minute. 

Panic bolts through him like a freight train, his eyes opening instantly to see what nightmares are made of. The shock of it hitting him like cinder bricks against his chest. 

Dean’s head is slack and hanging forward, his arms and legs completely motionless. There’s blood soaking Sam’s hand and it’s painting the wall behind his Brother in red. The red flannel is wet from a wound in Dean’s chest. Sam can’t believe that Bobby would shoot Dean and not him, can’t believe the grave mistake that had been made, when it should have been him all along. Not Dean. 

Never Dean. 

A wave of fury rises up Sam’s throat and he yells, “NOOO!” 

The feeling of desperation is so boldly lit in his body, that he feels the power within him surge even brighter than it had with Yellow-Eyes. His jaw unclenches as his eyes haze over once again, his fingers shaking around Dean’s neck. 

“Get,” Sam roars willfully. “OUT!!!!!” 

Sam’s vision swirls, fades black and then lights back up. The world around him spins, his shoulders hunching forward and one by one, he feels his fingers loosen around his Brother’s neck. And when it’s just his palm at Dean’s throat, he snaps his shoulders back and arches his head back as a wind glides through the room. 

“_**GET OUT!!!!!**_” 

The lights above Sam surge and then explode as his hand drops from Dean’s neck and he hears his Brother’s body slump to the ground. Sam feels his feet leave the ground until he’s hovering midair with his arms held out on either side. His body convulses, his nerves firing rapidly as a deep ache centers itself within his body and carves through him like a hot knife. He screams in pain, his brow glistening with sweat as his hands ball themselves into fists. 

Sam’s vision fades again, and then the walls around him begin to vibrate with what sounds like the drumming of a thousand hands. It gets louder and louder, until it feels like every one of those hands are inside of him and trying to tear him apart. Pain chokes him and has him gasping for air, his hair rustling around his face with the force of the wind around him. 

And just when it feels like he’s approaching an edge within himself that he can’t cross, the drumming of hands all slam down on his chest at the same time with an excruciating and violent—BANG! 

There’s a split second where he’s filled with a flood of relief as the dark corners of his body and soul are relinquished back unto him. Sam doesn’t know how he knows it, but he knows that Black-Eyes is gone. A smile weakly crawls across his lips for the victory that is his and then just as if the power inside of Sam was turned off, he falls from the air and lands with a hard thump on the floor. 

His smile is quickly replaced with tears when he sees clearly for the first time the scene in front of him. Dean lies lifelessly on the floor, the stain of blood smearing from the wall until it meets his body. And beside Dean’s body lies his own gun. 

It’s then that Sam realizes that it wasn’t Bobby who fired the gun. 

It was Dean. 

The horror of this realization is too great for Sam, it paralyzes him where he lies. And his body, too exhausted to cope, gives way to unconsciousness. 

When Sam wakes three days later, his eyes slam open and the only word that erupts from his mouth is his Brother’s name. He yells it repeatedly until Dean’s name is reduced to nothing but fitful sobs. 

“Sam?” Bobby’s voice comes suddenly, followed by his boots treading across the wood of his spare bedroom to sit beside Sam. “Boy, you scared the hell outta me!” It’s stern, but full of care. 

“Why’d he do it?” Sam heaves out, his eyes hot with tears. “Why? It should’ve been me.” 

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you two are gonna be the actual death of me. Which is hilarious considering what line of business I’m in.” Bobby rumbles out and pats Sam’s shoulder carefully. “Guess you missed the bulk of everything while you were out.” 

“Bobby?” A voice comes from the doorway, followed by slow footsteps. 

“What’r you doing up? You want the stitches to rip?” Bobby’s weight leaves the bed and Sam’s breath ceases in his lungs. 

“Is he awake?” The voice comes again and Sam can barely think it could be true, not when the last thing he saw was Dean in a pool of his own blood. “Sammy?” 

The floorboards in the room creak, and Sam’s eyes lift involuntarily to see if it’s true. “Dean?” He searches, trying to sit up from the bed, but a flash of pain has him relapsing. 

From around the bed comes Dean, his arm and shoulder bandaged up and in a sling to minimize movement. He looks like hell, but Sam imagines he himself looks no better. The hot sting of tears is replaced with a heart-racing pull of joy throughout his body. 

“I thought…” Sam tries to find the words for what he last saw of Dean. “I—” But he can’t even say it. 

“I know,” Dean nods and sits down where Bobby had just been. “It was close, went through my chest, but didn’t hit anything important. Guess you could say I’m a good shot.” He smiles cockily and looks down at Sam with an equal sense of relief. 

“How’re you feeling?” Dean says while visually scanning Sam’s features for any signs of distress. 

“Banged up.” Sam admits honestly. 

“Well, that’s to be expected.” Dean shrugs and comes to rest his free hand on Sam’s chest. “But I mean, _how are you?_” 

Sam thinks back to everything he’s just gone through and searches his body head to toe for any shred of that sideways sinking feeling of Black-Eyes’ presence. And when he can’t find any evidence of that nightmarish version of himself, he sighs deeply.

“He’s gone.” Sam says confidently. 

“Gone, gone?” 

“As far as I can tell.” Sam shrugs, knowing that he can’t ever be too sure that Black-Eyes or Yellow-Eyes are truly gone. 

Dean smiles for this, satisfied with Sam’s answer. 

“Glad to have you back with us, boy.” Bobby looks over Dean’s shoulder and smiles. “But don’t ever pull that shit again. You hear me?” 

“Leave him alone, Bobby.” Dean playfully instructs, and Bobby shakes his head as he makes his way to the door. 

Once Bobby’s gone from earshot, Dean’s face becomes more serious. 

“How do we know he won’t come back?” 

Sam breaks away from Dean’s eyes and looks up at the ceiling. The only things that float through his head are the confident words that those twisted versions of himself had promised him, that he would fulfill his destiny—one way or another. Sam closes his eyes and sighs deeply, his ribs shouting with the effort and causing him to grimace in pain. 

“I don’t know,” Sam whispers softly. “But I do know that if I stay on this path, in this life, hunting… it only ends one way for me. And there’s only one way to try and avoid it.” 

Dean’s brows stitch together at Sam’s words, trying to put the puzzle of them together and hear what Sam is truly saying to him. 

“I got into Stanford, Dean.” Sam breaths out before he chickens out. He meets his Brother’s eyes and sees the hurt rolling over those green irises. 

“No,” Dean whispers. “Sammy, you can’t.” 

“I don’t want to leave.” Sam reaches for Dean’s hand and squeezes it. “But I think I _have_ to.” 

There’s an emotion that flashes across his Brother’s face that if Sam wasn’t skilled enough at reading Dean’s body language, he might’ve missed it. The emotion mirrors the same one he’s had in his own heart for years, never knowing if Dean felt the same. But in this moment, with the weight of the world hanging between them, it’s all Sam can see. 

“Me too.” Sam lets a single tear escape from his eyes. “Always.” 

“And forever.” Dean’s lip shakes, his thumb collecting the tear for himself. 

They smile at each other warmly, Dean’s hand at Sam’s cheek and Sam’s fingers pressing the palm of Dean’s hand even closer. 

Sam prays he never forgets the warmth, or how soft the pads of his Brother’s fingers feel against his skin—as though his hands have never known the callus of violence. 

“Promise you’ll visit me.” 

Dean’s thumb brushes across Sam’s cheek. 

“Promise.”

Two months later, Sam’s sitting on a bus and counting the white lines as they sail by one by one. Each one takes him further away from everything he’s ever known, and the great unknown before him terrifies him about as much as it excites him. 

Sam pulls out a journal Dean had gotten him before he left. It’s brown leather with the words, ‘Your Destiny’, inscribed across it. He opens the cover and runs his fingers over the indent of Dean’s uppercase font. 

_It is what you make of it._

A smile spreads warmly across his cheeks as he pulls out a pen. He hovers the tip of it over the first lined page and writes in a font that is less neat than his Brother’s—

‘Dean, I’m going to be the best lawyer California’s ever seen.’

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it to the end, please let me know your thoughts! 
> 
> Thank you again for reading, it means the absolute world to me. 
> 
> <3


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